


Men Who Walk With Other Men

by toyhto



Series: Everything Is Alright [1]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: A little, Alfie thinks Tommy's pretty, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, I don't know, M/M, Post-Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05, There's a lot of dialogue, Tommy doesn't know why he keeps coming back to Alfie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:46:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23131906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Tommy goes to see a dead man who's living in a house near to the sea.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Alfie Solomons
Series: Everything Is Alright [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668835
Comments: 69
Kudos: 313





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I finally watched season 5. So, this story is a little bit AU, perhaps, but also I'm kind of trying to fit it with season 5 with mild spoilers for what happens in there. This begins post-season 4 and probably ends post-season 5. This was supposed to be a tiny one-shot but it got out of hands so I'm going to post it chapter by chapter. There might be four chapters in total but we'll see about that.
> 
> Say hi to me on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com)!

The first time he goes back to Margate is late in the autumn. It’s cold, it’s rainy, the wind goes through the clothes and through the skin, and there’s nothing to be seen except for the sand and the sea. But he supposes it’s as good a place as any, for a dead man.  
  
The house is outside the town, so close to the shore it seems possible that the water might catch it someday. Perhaps that’s the idea. And the house looks nothing special. It’s just a house guarded by the cliffs on a remote beach where no one bothers to come.  
  
A perfect place for a dead man.  
  
He knocks and then hovers at the steps until the maid opens the door. He tells her he’s an old friend. She looks confused and not scared of him at all. The waves are eating the shore in hunger, the rain is getting harder, and he’s fucking soaked already. The maid goes back in to ask and he stands at the front door like he’s no one. It’d be a nice thought if he still recognised niceness.  
  
“He says it’s okay,” the maid says when she comes back. He thanks her and then follows her through the house. It’s small and dark and full of stuff. Like a decorative grave.  
  
The maid takes him upstairs and opens the door to a room that’s full of everything. Full of books, full of clocks, full of carpets, and there’s a man sitting in an armchair next to the balcony.  
  
“You’ve got the fucking nerve, don’t you?” Alfie says, not looking at him. The rain is hitting against the glass doors. “Aren’t you afraid that I’m going to shoot you in the face or something?”  
  
He waits for a while, but Alfie doesn’t even glance at him. Then he takes a few steps.  
  
“Aren’t you talking anymore?” Alfie asks, turning his head to him. The left side of his face is nothing but scar and his left eye has a stare of a glass doll. “Too bad.”  
  
Tommy clears his throat. “Hi, Alfie.”  
  
“Ah, he talks,” Alfie says, smiling. It looks like a dead man’s smile, only with more bite in it. “How’s my dog?”  
  
“Alive,” Tommy says. “And well.”  
  
“Good,” Alfie says, patting the armrests. “He always was a good boy. It’d be a shame if something happened to him. Why’re you just standing there like a bloody idiot?”  
  
There’s another armchair but it’s covered in books. Tommy puts the books onto the side table and almost knocks down a lamp. When he’s sitting in the chair, Alfie nods at him and takes a deep breath that sounds like there’s sand in his lungs.  
  
“So, how have you been?”  
  
“Fucking bastard,” Alfie says in a quiet voice. “You come here and ask me how I’ve been? Really? You’re asking me that?”  
  
“Yeah,” Tommy says, leaning back in his chair. His clothes are wet and cold and there’s a slight tremor in his left foot which is fucking ridiculous. It makes him feel breakable.  
  
Alfie snorts. “Well, I’ve been good. Very good, mate. The first weeks were hell of course, but then again, I’ve had worse. And it kind of gave me so much pure joy to know you had fucking _failed._ Tommy Shelby, the most arrogant fucker I’ve come across in all my fucking life, who thinks he can do just fucking _anything,_ fucking failed to kill me. What the fuck, right?”  
  
Tommy clears his throat.  
  
“But then I realised that I was alive and only slightly addicted to morphine and the view was pretty great,” Alfie says, gesturing vaguely towards the balcony doors that are grey with rain. “And there’s been so many books I’ve been meaning to read but never had time, you know, there was always so much of _everything_ , but now that I’m dead I have all the time anyone could think of. No one fucking bothers me anymore. I get to sit here all day long and read my books. It’s not too bad. You’d hate it but it’s not too bad.”  
  
“I wouldn’t hate it.”  
  
“Yeah, you would, you idiot. You’d get bored and make up a bloody scheme and shoot someone in the head. Probably yourself. Well, tell me, why’ve you come? Not because of my pretty looks, I think.”  
  
“Sorry about that.”  
  
“Don’t you like it?” Alfie asks and turns the left side of his face to Tommy. “I’ve never been a pretty thing like yourself, but this damn thing is _ugly._ And it’s all your doing.”  
  
“Not all.”  
  
Alfie grins at him, then frowns. “So, what is it? Didn’t you learn yet? Do you need me to cross you for the fourth time or something?”  
  
“Probably,” he says, only his voice is hoarse. He clears his throat but it doesn’t help.  
  
“Perhaps you came here just to talk to me, just to talk to a dead man who’s sitting alone in his house by the sea.”  
  
“It’s a nice house.”  
  
“It’s a nice sea,” Alfie says, tilting his head to the side. “But I’m not a nice man. Not that I don’t appreciate the company. I just don’t understand what the hell you’re here for.”  
  
“I have too many ghosts. I needed to see if you really aren’t one of them.”  
  
Alfie stretches his arms. “I’m not a ghost. Now, are you going to fuck off?”  
  
“No,” Tommy says and crosses his legs. “Do you have tea?”  
  
“Yeah, I have tea.”  
  
“Are you going to ask me if I want tea?”  
  
Alfie squints at him. “Probably not.”  
  
“It’s raining outside. I walked.”  
  
“I can see that. You look like someone fucking pushed you to the sea.”  
  
“I would like some tea, thank you very much, Alfie.”  
  
“You bloody idiot,” Alfie says, his voice quiet again but the sharp edge is gone. Perhaps this is how Alfie talks to his dog. “You goddamn fool, you shoot me in the face and then come to my house and now you want to drink tea with me. Is that it?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And to be fair, I kind of almost got you killed, too.”  
  
“Yeah, you did.”  
  
“So, what’s wrong with you? I fuck you over and you keep coming back for it?”  
  
“I think,” Tommy says and takes a deep breath. He’s not been thinking about this, not exactly, only he doesn’t really sleep, so he has too much time to spend inside his own head. They are all ghosts there, but Alfie is one of those who are still alive. “I think we are even.”  
  
“You think so?” Alfie asks, almost impossibly quietly.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You think shooting me in the face is enough of a payment for the trouble I caused you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Seems reasonable,” Alfie says and shifts in his chair, turning his face to the door. “Rachel! Rachel, we would really appreciate some tea, my good friend Tommy and me. Rachel?”  
  
The maid comes and then goes again. Alfie crosses his hands over his knee and smiles at Tommy. The rain isn’t going down and now there’s thunder as well.  
  
“So, you have my dog,” Alfie says. “How is Cyril?”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“That’s fucking right, he’s a fine dog. Are you walking him properly? He likes walking.”  
  
“My staff takes care of that.”  
  
Alfie laughs. It’s a disturbing sound, hoarse and with an edge. But Tommy finds himself smiling all the same. “Your staff is walking my dog. Your goddamn staff, Tommy, I just wish you have enough of them since they are all walking my dog. And does he sleep in your bed?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Too bad,” Alfie says, chewing on his lower lip. “He’d like that. A pretty man like you. Cyril would like that very much.”  
  
“I’m not _pretty_ ,” Tommy says, not really bothering to put weight into the words. Apparently, there’s certain amount of bullshit you’re willing to take from someone you’ve shot in the face recently.  
  
“What, have you gone blind as well?” Alfie asks, then drops the smile. “I heard you were about to lose your mind. And then you recovered and got into politics, you fucking idiot.”  
  
“I got into politics.” Tommy pauses. “Where did you hear about the rest?”  
  
“So, it’s true.”  
  
He sighs, and it comes out sounding almost genuine. Fuck. “When have I been exactly _sane_ , Alfie?”  
  
“I wouldn’t know,” Alfie says, watching him. “But I heard you didn’t leave the house. I heard you were talking to your ghosts even when your kid was around.”  
  
“How the fuck did you hear that?”  
  
“I’m very good at getting to know things when I really want to.”  
  
“And why am I getting all this attention? Is it just because I shot you?”  
  
“Now you just keep bringing it up. What’re you trying to do, apologise?”  
  
Tommy bites his lip.  
  
“Because you’re doing it wrong. And also… You said it. We are even.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Don’t sound so relieved,” Alfie says. “You’re getting soft.”  
  
“ _You’re_ getting soft,” Tommy says, which isn’t the best insult he’s ever come up with, but he’s not really trying anymore. He already shot Alfie in the face.  
  
“Look, it’s our tea,” Alfie says. “Thank you, Rachel. Tommy here really needs something hot in him since he swam here.”  
  
The maid looks at Tommy, her face suggesting that he must be an idiot. Alfie’s smiling. But the cup of tea is warm in his hands and the tea itself is too hot to drink yet and it’s just good to have something to hold while he’s sitting in Alfie Solomon’s chair.  
  
“So,” Alfie says, after the maid is gone, “how are you ghosts?”  
  
Tommy tries to drink of his tea and burns his tongue. “Not very loud lately.”  
  
“Well, that’s good.” Alfie blinks. “No, that’s not _good_ , that’s not fucking good, Tommy. But I suppose that’s better than you usually have, which only makes me think that you’re really fucked up, mate, aren’t you?”  
  
Tommy shrugs. His fucking wet coat weights a ton on his shoulders. He puts the cup on a pile of books and takes off his coat.  
  
“I’m dead and you’re fucked up,” Alfie says, watching him. “What a pair. What a pair of poor fuckers. Why are you trying to get rid of your clothes?”  
  
“They’re wet.”  
  
“Well, you could’ve brought umbrella. I’m sure you can afford one, these days.”  
  
“I didn’t think it’d be raining.”  
  
“You could’ve driven your car to my front door.”  
  
“I wanted fresh air.”  
  
“You wanted the rain and you probably wanted the lightning to struck you. And don’t fucking say you did, because that’s a bit too grim, even for me. We’re just old friends drinking tea, alright? All nice and polite and civil. No one’s shot anyone in the face.”  
  
“I like your house. I like your… stuff.”  
  
“Yeah, well.” Alfie glances around. “It’s just stuff. Just things. But Rachel and me, we’re doing fine. She’s clever but doesn’t talk much. Probably thinks I’m stupid. Well, I’m partly to blame, because I talk to her too much. Too much nonsense. That’s why she thinks I’m not worth a decent conversation. But what can I do, yeah? There’s no one else to talk to. You even took my dog.”  
  
“Do you want him back?”  
  
“No, no, I’m sure he’s grown fond of you by now, because really, who wouldn’t? I’m sure he’s not thinking about me at all, no, he’s just trying to figure out how to get to sleep in your bed. And what’s it like, anyway? Your bed?”  
  
Tommy bites his lip. “Alfie –“  
  
“Sorry, sorry. I’m just teasing, you know. There’s no one to tease here, well, there’s Rachel but I don’t want her to lose her patience and leave me. I’d be a dead man. I’d be more of a dead man than I’m already. So, are you planning to drive back to Birmingham tonight? In your wet clothes? Because my bed, it’s big. I’m a big man but my bed’s bigger. And I bet that if you stripped off your clothes, you’d be warm. A warm thing in my –“  
  
“Alfie,” he says and realises vaguely that he’s smiling. “I’m not like that.”  
  
“Oh,” Alfie says, tilting his head to the side, “oh, that’s very fortunate, because I’m not like that either.”  
  
“Really.”  
  
“Yeah.” Alfie shrugs. “Not that anyone cares, not that anyone gives a shit about a dead man and who he fucks.”  
  
“I didn’t think we were talking about fucking.”  
  
“We weren’t,” Alfie says, “we aren’t. I’m certainly not proposing anything here, not even though you came to my house.”  
  
“You’re lonely.”  
  
“Show me one person,” Alfie says, pointing a finger at him, “show me fucking one person in this fucking world who isn’t lonely. Show me, Tommy.”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“Okay,” Alfie says. “So, you’re really going to drive to Birmingham? Tonight?”  
  
“I can’t sleep. I could just as well be driving.”  
  
“You can’t sleep?”  
  
“Not much.”  
  
“Well, I’m not going to take you to my bed, then,” Alfie says. “Because I’ve been sleeping very well lately. Thanks to you, I suppose. I’ve been sleeping like a corpse.”  
  
“I’m very glad to hear.”  
  
“You’re a fucking bastard, Tommy Shelby, that’s what you are,” Alfie says, but he’s smiling again, and this time it seems genuine. “Drink your fucking tea and then go home.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
The next time, he drives his car to the house. It’s a pretty day, late in the spring. The sea is restless, but the sun is shining and there’re the sounds of seagulls and the waves trying to climb the shore. He used to hate seagulls, but apparently not anymore.  
  
The door opens before he has time to knock.  
  
“Oh, you bloody bastard,” Alfie says, blocking the doorway. “You drove your car all the way to my front door.”  
  
“I didn’t feel like walking.”  
  
“Well, I can see why,” Alfie says, waving his hand. “It’s a perfectly nice fucking day. No rain and no thunder. You’d have to walk into the sea to get wet and uncomfortable. So, are you going to come in?”  
  
“If you stop blocking the door.”  
  
“I’m not blocking the bloody door.” Alfie steps aside and then pats him on the shoulder as he walks in. He almost flinches. It’s not like people don’t pat him on the shoulder these days, because they do, people who know him only from the politics and therefore don’t really know him at all. But _Alfie_ knows that he’s carrying enough weapons to deal with anyone who pats him on the shoulder carelessly. “Tommy? What’s going on in there? In your pretty little head?”  
  
“Nothing,” he says and ignores Alfie’s grin. It doesn’t look real, anyway. Apparently he’s stopped walking and is now standing in the foyer, barely in the house.  
  
“I’m going to ask Rachel to make us tea,” Alfie says, “and then we’re going to drink it upstairs, exactly like the last time. Unless you have other ideas.”  
  
“No, that’s fine.” Then he stays still when Alfie pats him on the shoulder again. “What the hell are you doing?”  
  
“Just trying to see how much you’re going to take,” Alfie says with a short smile. “Rachel! We need tea. Tommy is here again and we would very much like some tea. Rachel?”  
  
They go upstairs and wait for the tea. The room looks different in the sunlight, less of a grave and more of a hiding place. There’s too much of everything and it doesn’t look real somehow, it looks like somebody forgot the stuff and Alfie here. Tommy bites his lip and takes his tea when the maid brings it, and the girl glances at him tentatively, probably wondering if he’s the same idiot who walked in the rain and got his clothes all wet.  
  
When she goes, the room gets suddenly quiet.  
  
“So,” Tommy says, when he can’t take it anymore.  
  
“So,” Alfie says, “is this a social call?”  
  
Tommy should say that it isn’t. There’re thinks he might want to discuss, things that concern the business he’s running in London, even politics. Alfie knows London like Tommy knows Birmingham. It’d almost explain why he came here.  
  
He takes a deep breath. “No.”  
  
“Oh,” Alfie says and sips of his tea. “Good. Because frankly, I’d have been disappointed. I don’t have much company these days. How’s my dog?”  
  
“Very good.”  
  
“Still not sleeping in your bed?”  
  
Tommy shakes his head.  
  
“Well, one day, one day,” Alfie says. “And how’s your kid?”  
  
“I have two.”  
  
“I knew that. Congratulations, even though you didn’t really do much about it, did you? And how’s your…”  
  
“My wife.”  
  
“Ah, I heard you married.”  
  
“A while ago.”  
  
“Good for you.”  
  
“You could find someone. If you’re missing company.”  
  
“Find someone?” Alfie says with a sneer. “I’m sure there’d be a lot of candidates. To be a dead man’s bride, how lovely”  
  
“The view is quite good.”  
  
“But you aren’t talking about my face.” Alfie pauses. “No, Tommy, that’s not my kind of a thing. Not at all. I’m happy for you, though.”  
  
“You’re happy for me?”  
  
“Don’t sound so disapproving. I’ve got the fucking right to be happy for you, don’t I? And if you’re suggesting that I shouldn’t be happy for a man who almost shot my face off, well, fuck you. I’ve had time to forget about that.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“You mean that.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re actually glad that I’ve forgiven you, you poor bastard,” Alfie says, puts his empty cup of tea aside and leans closer to him. “You’re getting soft. So, what’re we going to talk about? Your work? Your life? Because as you know, I don’t have one.”  
  
“Fuck, no. Not about my life.”  
  
“Okay, then. Did you hear the seagulls? They came early this year. A nice sound, that is, until they’re fucking shouting through the night when all you want to do is fucking sleep.”  
  
Tommy nods.  
  
“You still aren’t sleeping.”  
  
“Not much. And I said, not about my life.”  
  
“Well, if you wanted to talk with someone who’s going to play with your rules, you wouldn’t have picked me. Is it getting better or worse?”  
  
He bites his lip. “I don’t know.”  
  
“You don’t know or it’s getting worse and you don’t want to say?”  
  
“Both. I don’t know.”  
  
“And it’s not helping that you have your new wife and your new kid.”  
  
“Sometimes. I don’t know. It’s not their fault, though. They’re… Lizzie is…”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“It’s different from what I had.”  
  
“Of course it is. You love her?”  
  
“I’m not…” He takes a deep breath. “I’m not sure if I’m exactly whole anymore, Alfie. It’s like there’s this… line, this invisible line and I’ve taken one step over it, but also I don’t know where it _is._ And the voices…”  
  
The house creaks. The seagulls shout. Alfie is sitting in his armchair, his hands crossed, waiting.  
  
“If I can talk to ghosts and they talk back to me, how can I know that I’m real?”  
  
“None of us is _real_ , you goddamn idiot,” Alfie says quietly. “We’re like a fucking sandcastle. At first there’s a lot but slowly it crumbles. Slowly, we lose everything. Stop wondering if you’re real, because you never were.”  
  
“I didn’t think you’d think like that.”  
  
“I don’t fucking think like that. But you’re beating yourself for not being something that you think you should be and aren’t, and that’s just damn stupid.”  
  
“Don’t call me stupid.”  
  
“I call you whatever I want. That’s why you came back to me.” Alfie tilts his head to the side. “Tell me I’m wrong.”  
  
Tommy tries to drink his tea but the cup is already empty.  
  
“So, you think there’s not enough of you left for you to love your wife.”  
  
“Sometimes,” he says slowly, “sometimes it’s like I can’t even see her. She realises it and… she knows what I’m like. She makes me see her when I can’t.”  
  
“A good woman.”  
  
“Yeah. With a tight grip.”  
  
Alfie snorts. “Shut the fuck up. I don’t need to hear about that.”  
  
“Not your kind of a thing.”  
  
“No, not at all. I can talk about love, alright, but what do you do in your bed with your woman, that’s your own goddamn business.” But he’s still smiling. “Tommy, you said you didn’t want to talk about your life.”  
  
“You don’t fucking listen.”  
  
“You don’t fucking mean anything you say.”  
  
“True,” Tommy says, not meaning it. “What’re you doing, Alfie? You’re just sitting here. You can’t keep this up forever.”  
  
“Watch me.”  
  
“You told me you were dying. Before I tried to shoot you.”  
  
“And a fucking great job you did with that,” Alfie says and licks his lips. Tommy blinks. “I am. I fucking am, it’s just taking more time than I thought. Partly because you missed.”  
  
“I didn’t _miss._ ”  
  
“You couldn’t kill me, and now I have to fucking die on my own,” Alfie says, crossing his legs. “More tea?”  
  
“Yeah, sure.”  
  
“Good. Rachel! Rachel, come here! And to answer your question, Tommy, I don’t have a goddamn clue what I’m going to do. I’ve been dead for a while now and being bored is a small cost for avoiding all the nonsense living people need to deal with. I’m fucking tired, Tommy. I don’t want to cross you for the fourth time. I don’t care about that bullshit anymore. I don’t have the patience to deal with all the bastards that come to ask me if I want to help them kill you. I’d rather sit here and read my books.”  
  
“You’re fucking bored, Alfie.”  
  
“Sure.” Alfie shrugs. “I’m not _completely_ dead, though. There’re some people who come to see me. From London.”  
  
“Some people –“  
  
“Are you jealous? Don’t be. They aren’t as pretty as you, darling.”  
  
Tommy bites his lip.  
  
“It’s just talking, really,” Alfie says. “I’m telling you this so that you don’t need to imagine me in the bedroom. It’s just some old friends who come to see me to talk about, I don’t know, the weather. The books. And all the bloody nonsense that’s going on in London. These people, they don’t know what to do without me.”  
  
“I can believe that.”  
  
“Don’t be jealous.”  
  
Tommy shakes his head. “I’m not _jealous_.”  
  
“Don’t be,” Alfie says, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward. “You’re my favourite.”  
  
“I’m not fucking –“, Tommy pauses and takes a deep breath. “You want me here.”  
  
“Yeah, I fucking want you here, alright? I want you here. Are you surprised?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Alfie chews on his lower lip. “Are you offended?”  
  
“No,” Tommy says and clears his throat. “You can want me.”  
  
“I can?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I _can?_ ”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So, you don’t mind me looking at you. You don’t worry about what I’m thinking about when you’re sitting there, in my chair, drinking my tea and putting up with my nonsense.”  
  
“What’re you thinking about?”  
  
Alfie blinks. “I’m thinking about… I’m thinking that you look lovely.”  
  
“Lovely?” There’re at least three clocks in the room, ticking in an off-beat rhythm, and then there’s Tommy’s heart.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m not _lovely._ ”  
  
Alfie tilts his head to the side, watching him. “Well, I’m not asking for your opinion. You don’t get to comment on – oh, there’s Rachel. There’s the tea. I had forgotten about the goddamn tea.”  
  
Tommy had forgotten about it as well. He lets the maid fill his cup and takes it, listening to his heartbeat. It’s his own this time, not a ghost’s. It’s as if his own mind could fill his body for fucking once. And when he glances up from his tea, Alfie’s watching him with the same look still in his eyes.  
  
“I don’t care what you’re thinking about me,” he says. “Just don’t expect anything of me.”  
  
“I know that,” Alfie says softly. “I fucking know you, Tommy. I know.”  
  
“I think I’ll come here again. It’s a nice place. I like the sea.”  
  
“Sure,” Alfie says. “You can come. I’d like that.”  
  
“We can drink tea.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, “we can drink tea.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's more tea, and more conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two is here, guys!
> 
> And I may or may not have written a sex scene for this story last night after having consumed a modest amount of alcohol AND if I remember right, it might have gotten a little graphic, and though I haven't dared to read it yet, there is a possibility that the rating of this story will go to 'just to be sure' Explicit. Just to warn you guys, I hope none of you is very strict about only reading Mature.
> 
> In this chapter, however, there isn't drunk-written explicit sex scenes. Instead, there's tea and conversation. Surprise!

He goes back in the summer, when there’re tourists in the town and Alfie is cranky and only wants to talk about the books he’s reading. Tommy doesn’t know a fucking thing about the books, and Alfie keeps telling him that he’s being too clever for his own good, or too pretty, and he ignores the comments until finally he snaps at Alfie. For some reason, that makes it easier.  
  
The next time he goes back, it’s raining a little and they go for a walk on the beach like two goddamn tourists with their umbrellas, only they also have guns. Alfie asks about his family and he tells Alfie that he knows Lizzie is unhappy but can’t do anything about it. He’s beginning to think that maybe the kids are unhappy as well, and it feels like a fucking knife in the ribs. Alfie asks him if he’s unhappy and he laughs in a tone so bitter he didn’t know he had it in him. They go back to the house and drink tea. Alfie’s got himself a cat and she comes to sit in Tommy’s lap.  
  
In the autumn, he drives to the house late in the afternoon. He didn’t mean to come. He’s not sure if he knew where he was going when he started driving. But now he’s here, Alfie’s cat is sleeping in his lap and outside, it’s growing dark.  
  
“You don’t have to drive back tonight, you know,” Alfie says, watching the glass door to the balcony. All the clocks are ticking. “I have a guestroom.”  
  
“A guestroom?”  
  
“Yeah. For guests.”  
  
“Like me.”  
  
“Like you.”  
  
“Once,” Tommy begins, stroking the cat, listening to the clocks, thinking vaguely about the road back home. It’s going to be dark and it’s a long drive, and he’s not been talking to his ghosts much lately. They probably have a lot to say. Especially Grace. He can already see her sitting in the back seat, maybe touching his shoulder lightly.  
  
“Yeah?” Alfie says, still not looking at him, and only then he realises he’s stopped talking. “Once what?”  
  
He clears his throat. “Once, you told me to sleep in your bed.”  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says, but there’s an edge in his voice, “that was a fucking joke.”  
  
“Was it?”  
  
He watches as Alfie opens and closes his mouth, grabs the armrests and shifts in the chair. Alfie should know by now that he doesn’t fucking care. Everyone he’s ever known wants something of him. He can fucking deal with it. And he’s not afraid of goddamn Alfie Solomons, he’s not worried that Alfie might get tired of talking nonsense about his pretty face and try to do something about it. He's got a gun and he’s faster. He can put Alfie Solomons in a fucking box if he wants to. He’s not _afraid._ And he doesn’t care.  
  
“No,” Alfie says finally, looking him in the eyes. “It wasn’t exactly a joke.”  
  
He nods. The cat in his lap stirs awake and falls asleep again.  
  
“You want me to say something about it?” Alfie asks. He sounds nervous, which is making Tommy nervous, but he tries to ignore it. “You want me to fucking apologise or something?”  
  
He shakes his head. “Not necessary.”  
  
“Because I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t apologise. I’ve done nothing wrong.” Alfie pauses. “Well, clearly I’ve done every possible goddamn wrong thing that there is. But that’s not one of them.” There’s another pause. “Thinking that your little face is pretty isn’t one of them. Thinking about what you’d look like without your ridiculous clothes isn’t one of them.”  
  
“So,” Tommy says slowly, “no women?”  
  
Alfie shakes his head.  
  
“Never?”  
  
“Well,” Alfie says, “maybe when I was young and stupid, I wanted to know what it’d be like, you know, what the fuss was about. But I never got it. And then I… then it kind of became clear why.”  
  
“You…”  
  
“I’m a damn sodomite. I told you once.”  
  
“I thought you were joking.”  
  
“Yeah, well, some things are easier to tell in a joke.”  
  
Tommy bites his lip, takes a cigarette and lights it. At least his hands are steady. He doesn’t feel steady, but the ghosts are quiet. Perhaps the damn things are listening. “So, what’s this thing about me? About my pretty face? Another joke?”  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
He glances at the balcony doors. It’s dark already. The thought of the ghosts and him driving back to Birmingham makes him feel thin. “And the easy way to tell me.”  
  
“Probably the only way,” Alfie says. “Why would I want to tell you, anyway? You aren’t interested.”  
  
“No,” Tommy says, “no, I’m not. That’s not why I keep coming here, Alfie.”  
  
“I know that.”  
  
“But maybe,” he says, “maybe you want to tell me anyway. Some people like to talk about their… feelings.”  
  
“Well,” Alfie says slowly, “there would be a pretty good chance that you’d take it badly. If I told you something like that, I mean.”  
  
“I wouldn’t. I don’t fucking care, Alfie. I thought you realised that. Everyone wants a piece of me. I don’t care which one it is.”  
  
“Really?” Alfie’s leaning back in his chair. He looks like he’s preparing for a fight, or maybe expecting a blow. “Even if it’s your cock?”  
  
“Even if it’s my cock.” The cat wakes up again and jumps off from Tommy’s lap. He’s suddenly cold. “So, is that it? That’s what you’re after?”  
  
Alfie chews on his lower lip, watching him as if trying to count something in his head.  
  
“My cock? That’s what you want of me?”  
  
“No,” Alfie says, “no, that’s not the only thing. That’s not the only thing I want of you. That’s not what I’m thinking about when I… when I think about your pretty face. Fuck, Tommy, you don’t want me to talk about this.”  
  
“Or maybe you don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
“I -,” Alfie begins and clears his throat, “I haven’t talked about it, not once in my fucking life. Not really. No one’s asked me. No one’s been fucking sitting in my chair, drinking my tea, talking about the fucking weather and asking me… about that.”  
  
“Do you mind?”  
  
Alfie shakes his head slowly.  
  
“Good,” Tommy says and puts off the cigarette. “Because I’m curious. What’s it about men that you like?”  
  
“What’s it about women that you like?” Alfie asks in a serious voice.  
  
Tommy opens his mouth and then closes it.  
  
“Is it the tits? The cunts? Do they just smell better?”  
  
“I don’t know. Maybe. All of that. And…”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says. “Yeah, I know. So, to answer your question, I like cocks just fine. They’re nice. They’re more than nice if they’re attached to someone I want to… someone I really want to fuck. Someone I fucking fancy, if you’re familiar with the phrase. But it’s not only about that. For example -,” and he makes a vague gesture towards Tommy’s lap, “- I don’t fucking care about your cock. I’m sure it’s lovely, but I’ve never seen it or felt it in my fucking hand and after this conversation, I probably never will. And I like you all the same. I fucking like you, Tommy.”  
  
“Me.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“What the hell is wrong with you?”  
  
“Quite a lot, I suppose,” Alfie says. “But this thing, this isn’t a part of what’s wrong with me. With this, I’ve made my peace a long time ago. So, if you’re planning to give me shit about it, you can fuck off.”  
  
Tommy takes a deep breath and loosens his tie. Alfie’s watching his hands. “I don’t think I’m going to drive home tonight.”  
  
He can see Alfie swallowing. “Really?”  
  
“Yeah. I’m tired and it’s dark and you said you have a guestroom.”  
  
“Yeah, sure, I have a guestroom.”  
  
“So, can I stay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says slowly.  
  
“Great,” Tommy says and pushes his coat off his shoulders. It’s too warm in here anyway. “Can I ask you more about it?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Do you fall in love?”  
  
“What?” Alfie asks. “What the hell? What kind of a question is that?”  
  
“Because I don’t know. I’ve never heard of… someone like you falling in love. I’ve never heard of it even though I’ve heard about other things. So, I was wondering. Perhaps that’s just something your lot won’t do.”  
  
“I can fucking fall in love,” Alfie says in a quiet voice. “What the fuck, Tommy?”  
  
“I was just curious.”  
  
“Yeah, alright.” Alfie stares at him for a while. “Maybe you’re trying to ask if I have fallen in love with you. Is that it? Is that it, Tommy? Because if you’re thinking about that, you can fucking stop. I don’t fall for fuckers who’re never going to love me back.”  
  
“I wasn’t trying to ask that,” Tommy says. His hands are trembling but just a little.  
  
Alfie is silent for a long while, then lets out a deep sigh and leans back in his chair. “Okay. My bad. I was… Nobody asks me questions like that, Tommy.”  
  
“Yeah, I get it.”  
  
“No, you don’t fucking get it. You don’t have a goddamn clue.”  
  
“I –“  
  
“You don’t fucking know anything about this.”  
  
“Okay,” Tommy says, raising his hands. “Okay. I don’t get it. Can I still stay for the night?”  
  
Alfie looks suddenly very tired. Tommy probably shouldn’t have shot him in the face. It made him look older. “Yeah, you can stay, you fucking asshole.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“I like you, Tommy. I don’t know why but I fucking like you.” Alfie takes a deep breath. “Do you want more tea?”  
  
That night, he sleeps in Alfie’s guestroom. It’s small and there’re too many paintings, all of them staring at him, which probably helps because all his ghosts keep their mouths shut. He wakes up before dawn, surprised that he slept for several hours, and leaves a note to Alfie.  
  
Then he drives home.  
  
  
**  
  
  
When he goes back the next time, it’s late in the autumn. The roads are in bad shape and he thinks about turning back. But the more he tries not to think about Alfie, the more he feels like there was something odd about the way he sneaked out from the house the last time. He only did it because he didn’t want to wake Alfie up. And it wasn’t like they were planning to have fucking breakfast together or anything. He stayed the night because he didn’t feel like driving back in the evening and that’s it.  
  
But when he finally gets to Margate, drives past the town and to Alfie’s house by the sea, his heart is beating more heavily than it should be. It’s loud and unpleasant and he can’t fucking believe that meeting Alfie Solomons is making him _nervous_. And what is worse, it’s not that he thinks Alfie might shoot him or something.  
  
When he finally gets out of the car, Alfie’s already standing in the doorway.  
  
“I didn’t know if you were planning to come back,” Alfie says.  
  
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Tommy says, walking to him. His fucking hands are trembling a little, so he pushes them to his pockets.  
  
“Shut the fuck up,” Alfie says, smiling, but his eyes are restless. Whatever he’s thinking, he’s not hiding it well. He’s losing his touch. Tommy wants to point that out but can’t find the words, and Alfie lets him in but doesn’t pat him on the shoulder this time, doesn’t touch him at all and instead keeps more distance than usually.  
  
“The roads are bad,” he says, loosens his tie and takes off his coat. Then he takes off his holster as well and gives them all to the maid, who glances at Alfie with wide eyes.  
  
“Just hide the man’s guns somewhere, Rachel,” Alfie says. “He’s trying to make a point.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“I have enough guns hidden in the house for the both of us, if something happens. So, are you hungry?”  
  
“I’m not trying to make a point. And I’m fine with tea.”  
  
“Yeah, but are you hungry? You said the roads are bad. It’s taken forever for you to get here.”  
  
He stares at Alfie for a while, then nods. “Yeah. I could eat.”  
  
“Great,” Alfie says, “because we have chicken. Rachel, can you put a plate on the table for Tommy? We’d like to eat as soon as you’re ready.”  
  
“Alfie, you don’t need to –“  
  
“Stop that,” Alfie says. “I’m hungry anyway. You can either eat with me or fucking sulk in the corner. And I strongly recommend that you eat.”  
  
So, he eats with Alfie. They don’t talk much. A little about the weather, a little about Tommy’s politics, but he can feel his mouth going tighter in the corners and Alfie drops the subject easily, tells him about the house instead, about the leaking roof, the houseplants, the stupid tourists wandering too far on the beach, the mice in the cellar, all the nonsense. He listens and finishes his chicken.  
  
They go to upstairs afterwards, sit in their chairs and look through the balcony doors. There’s too much silence. Grace is breathing in Tommy’s head, or maybe it’s he who is breathing, maybe he’s falling out from his own mind. His fingers itch for the vial in his pocket. He should leave. If Alfie’s not going to talk to him, he should fucking leave, but he can’t make himself do that either.  
  
“What?” Alfie asks after a while.  
  
“What do you meant, what?”  
  
“You look like a goddam horse who’s about to be shot.”  
  
“No,” Tommy says and tries to laugh, but it gets stuck in his mouth. “No, I just… I need to…” And then he takes the vial, takes a sip, puts it back. It’s so simple. Everything quiets down a little. His hands are steady again.  
  
“That’s not booze.”  
  
“No.” He doesn’t even mind that Alfie’s looking at him like that, curious, as if he wants to see it all, all the fucking shit Tommy’s head is full of.  
  
“What’s it, then?”  
  
He bites his lip. What the hell. “Laudanum.”  
  
“Laudanum,” Alfie says slowly. “So, it’s been worse?”  
  
“No. I don’t know.”  
  
“You don’t sleep.”  
  
“Not much. Don’t try to fix me, Alfie.”  
  
“You’ve kept your little bottle out of my sight until today,” Alfie says. “What’s different now?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“It’s me, isn’t it?”  
  
“No,” Tommy says, “no, it’s not you, Alfie. Stop guessing.”  
  
“You’re losing your fucking nerve,” Alfie says, “because last time you were here, you made me talk about my… Fucking hell, Tommy, you made me talk about it. You asked me questions. And now you can’t look me in the eyes.”  
  
“I can fucking look you in the eyes.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Alfie says, even though Tommy’s looking the fucker in the eyes just now. “Do you think I don’t see it? You can’t fucking stand me now, can you, Tommy? You wanted to know and now you can’t stand to be around me.”  
  
“You’re wrong,” he says and stands up before he can think about it. He clenches his fists and opens them again. Everything is soft in his head. For a few hours, everything is soft, and then it all is going to come crashing in, and it’s worse every time. It’s fucking worse every time. And he can’t deal with Alfie fucking Solomons being a fucking idiot, not when he’s got enough to deal with as it is.  
  
He walks to Alfie. He doesn’t have his gun, which is alright, because he was never going to shoot Alfie, what an absurd thought. He shoves Alfie at the chest, only he has to lean down for that because Alfie’s still sitting in the armchair.  
  
“What the hell are you doing?” Alfie asks quietly, not doing anything even though Tommy’s pushing him. “Do you want to fight or something?”  
  
“No, I don’t want to fucking _fight._ Bloody hell, Alfie, I don’t… I don’t care that you’re a queer.”  
  
“Don’t you?” Alfie asks, then grabs Tommy’s wrist and squeezes a little. “Don’t you really?”  
  
“No,” he says and pushes at Alfie’s shoulder with his free hand. Alfie can fucking hold his wrist if he likes. “I just feel weird. I should’ve waited until you woke up.”  
  
Alfie clears his throat. “The last time? Yeah, I would’ve liked that.”  
  
“I feel weird. Like something’s happening and I don’t get it.”  
  
“I’m surprised you get anything at this point,” Alfie says, “with your insomnia and the fucking laudanum. But you don’t need to feel weird around me. We’re friends. We’re friends, Tommy.”  
  
“I don’t have friends. I only have kin.”  
  
“Yeah, I don’t know how this happened, either,” Alfie says, his grip on Tommy’s wrist easing a little. “Want me to let go?”  
  
“I don’t fucking care.”  
  
“You don’t fucking care that I’m holding your hand.”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“You’re insane,” Alfie says, but his voice is quiet and his thumb is stroking the inside of Tommy’s wrist. “I’m not playing games here, Tommy. You came to me. You came to me and I’m not going to try to stop you from coming, because I’m alone in here, I’m alone in my bloody house and if someone like you comes to see me, I’m not going to stop you. Do you know what I’m thinking about when I’m alone? I’m thinking about the conversations I could have with you. I’m thinking about all the stupid things you might say. And sometimes, yeah, sometimes I’m thinking about stripping off all your fancy clothes and having you naked and willing in my damn bed, and sometimes I think about your cock, especially since the last time, because the last time, Tommy, you asked me what I think of cocks. You fucking asked me. And sometimes I think about kissing you. But I’m not going to push myself at you. That’s not what’s happening in here. That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to touch you unless you come at me, and that’s not going to happen, so that’s it. That’s it.” And then he lets go of Tommy’s wrist.  
  
Tommy straightens up. He’s standing too close to Alfie, his feet almost in between Alfie’s sprawled legs. He should go to sit in his chair, but he can’t move. “You aren’t going to touch me?”  
  
“No,” Alfie says softly, “I’m not, you fucking idiot.”  
  
“But you like me.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You want to touch me but you won’t.”  
  
He sees Alfie swallowing. “Yeah. That’s how it is.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
Alfie nods. “And now, if you don’t mind, maybe you’d like to go sit in that chair again.”  
  
“You think I’m standing too close to you.”  
  
“You’re high on the fucking laudanum,” Alfie says, “and you’re blaming me for wanting to fuck men, and you don’t believe I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. So, yeah, you’re standing too close to me.”  
  
“Okay,” Tommy says and tugs at his collar. “Okay, I’ll go.” He backs away to his chair and sits down. Bloody hell, he’s tired. He shouldn’t have taken the laudanum. He’s good but tired and he doesn’t know what to do with Alfie. Clearly it’s madness that he keeps coming back to a dead man who also wants to fuck him. But he can’t possibly give Alfie up. He can’t do that.  
  
“I hate laudanum,” Alfie says, watching him. “I fucking hate it.”  
  
“It’s the only thing that fixes my brain.”  
  
“It doesn’t fix it,” Alfie says and then starts talking about London, about the things that don’t concern Tommy at all. About funny things, sad things, irrelevant things. It takes him a while to realise that Alfie’s trying to take his thoughts off. Of what, he’s not sure.  
  
He stays for the night. Laudanum hasn’t completely worn off yet, so he sleeps for a few hours and then wakes up, wanders around a little and sits down in Alfie’s armchair. He sits there until the sun rises. It’s nice, to watch it through the window. And when Alfie finds him there, he only feels tired. There’s a voice in his head asking him what the hell he’s doing with a dead man. That’s Grace. But Alfie pats him on the shoulder clumsily and makes him drink tea and eat breakfast and have a short walk on the beach, and the sound of the waves almost beats Grace’s voice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More tea. More conversation. Also maybe a little bit of touching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go again! Still don't know if this is going up to Explicit or stay Mature. I can never tell the difference.

He stays away for the winter. Time goes fast, anyway. Things are fairly good, probably as good as they are going to be ever again, for him. But sometimes in the morning, when he’s trying to put on his suit, it feels like he’s going to put on another face as well. He takes care of every detail, but his eyes are hollow and tired, and Lizzie sees it all, which makes it better and worse at the same time. He asks her why Ruby is so quiet, and Lizzie tells him that she isn’t, not when he’s not around. And Lizzie tells him that Charlie’s angry at him for being away all the time, and he takes Charlie to see the horses and wonders if perhaps Charlie’s angry for him being there. Maybe he should just disappear.  
  
When he disappears, he disappears to Margate. It’s not exactly the spring yet. The sea is cold and angry and the seagulls’ shouts sound like a warning. He walks to the house anyway. The maid lets him in, takes his coat, lets him keep his holster. She tells him Alfie’s upstairs, he thinks about asking her why Alfie didn’t come to greet him at the door. She probably knows Alfie better than anyone, which might not be much. But he can hear Alfie humming off-key upstairs and the girl’s looking at him like she’s eager to get rid of him. He knows that look. He goes upstairs and stops at the doorway.  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says, sitting in his armchair. “What a pleasant surprise. What the fuck brings you here?”  
  
Tommy clears his throat. He can see the expectation in Alfie’s eyes but can’t think of anything clever to say. He’s not taken laudanum since the last night and it’s a tricky thing, keeping the voices from getting loud in his head.  
  
“What?” Alfie asks in a different tone. “You aren’t even barking this time. Are you sick or something?”  
  
“No.” Maybe it’d be easier if they called it a sickness. “No, just… haven’t slept much.”  
  
“Poor fucker,” Alfie says. “Sit down. Have tea. I’m sure Rachel already has a kettle on. Rachel! Rachel, we would like to have tea! Okay. Sit down, Tommy. Sit down and wait for the tea. I’m glad to see you, as you know. Even though you’re pale as fuck.”  
  
Tommy lights a cigarette. It’s good to have something in his fingers, something to concentrate on. “Not so pretty now, am I?”  
  
“Ah,” Alfie says. He sounds delighted but it’s surely an act. “Flirting, are we now?”  
  
“Just asking.”  
  
“Asking, he says. Oh, fucking hell. _Asking._ Well, you’re still pretty. Pretty as fuck. Since you’re _asking._ ”  
  
“Good to know.”  
  
“ _Good to know?_ You know, Tommy, I’ve known you for a long time. And sometimes I think I’ve become pretty good at reading you, seeing through your bullshit, I mean. But I don’t know what you’re playing at now. Are you flirting with me?”  
  
Tommy shakes his head. His heart is beating and the voices are quiet. “I don’t know.”  
  
“And you just came. I haven’t seen you in fucking _months_ and then you walk in and start flirting with me. Are you trying to give me a heart attack or something? Because let me tell you, I’ve been lonely. Life is lonely for a dead man. So, it’s a little bit of a shock, to have a pretty man like yourself to waltz in and start flirting right away. Before tea, even. Before – oh, Rachel, it’s a bloody miracle that you came. Give us the tea. Yeah, yeah, there. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rachel. So, where was I?”  
  
“You were calling me pretty,” Tommy says. The maid can still hear them, but what the hell.  
  
“Oh, I was, was I? Take your cup and drink your tea, Tommy.”  
  
“I’m not trying to…” He takes his tea. “I’m not trying to give you a heart attack.”  
  
“Really? Because I wouldn’t know. It’d be just like you.”  
  
“I just wanted to see you.”  
  
“See?” Alfie says, pointing a finger at him. “Now you’re trying to give me a heart attack. You wanted to _see me?”_  
  
“We’re friends, Alfie.”  
  
“Yeah. We’re friends.” Alfie leans back in his armchair. “ _Friends._ That’s right. Good that you got that finally.”  
  
“So, how have you been?”  
  
“How have I _been?_ ” Alfie asks and then tells him about everything, which isn’t much. Alfie tries to ask about him, too, tries to ask how things are in Birmingham and in the house and with Lizzie and the kids and the business and the goddamn politics and all that. But it only takes a few sentences to make him believe Tommy doesn’t want to talk about it. There’re too many voices in his head if he tries to talk about those things, too many voices reminding him of everything he’s deliberately not thinking about.  
  
So, Alfie speaks of the house and of the seagulls and he lets Alfie speak and sits back in his chair, listening. If he was here alone, he wouldn’t last for a day. He would walk right into the sea and the voices would stop whispering. But he can be here like this, listening to Alfie’s rambling, pretending he's someone who can stay put for a fucking second and not drown.  
  
“So,” Alfie says finally, “so, you staying for the night or not?”  
  
“I could,” Tommy says. Everyone will be better off without him. Lizzie won’t have to wonder why she married a broken man and the kids will talk and smile.  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says slowly, “you could stay.”  
  
“If you will have me.”  
  
“Oh, bloody hell, Tommy. Of course I will _have you._ ”  
  
“Even though I piss you off every time I’m here.”  
  
“ _Because_ my piss me off, you fucking idiot.”  
  
“Alfie,” Tommy says and crosses his legs, “maybe you should find someone. Someone who’s… I don’t know. I don’t know what men like you are looking for.”  
  
“Men like me?”  
  
He nods.  
  
“Bullshit. You know exactly what I’m looking for, you arrogant little shit.”  
  
“I just thought, maybe, if you’re lonely, if you’re lonely when you’re sitting here in your armchair all the time –“  
  
“And you think that’s easy? That it’d be easy for me to find someone pretty who wants to stick around, someone who’s clever and stupid enough to fucking piss me off all the time? Let me tell you, it isn’t easy. It isn’t easy at all. And I’ve never had much luck in that area.”  
  
“In –“  
  
“Love.”  
  
“ _Love._ ”  
  
“Yeah. It’s easy for you. You have pretty women lining up for you for whatever fucking reason. They must know you’re full of shit but they don’t seem to care, do they, they line up for you and you just pick whomever you want. You can marry and have kids and have your wife sleeping in your bed every fucking night and the world just applauses you for it. It’s easy for you.”  
  
“Easy?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I don’t have…” He bites his lip. “What do you mean, lining up? That I can get laid if I want to? And what the hell has it to do with love?”  
  
Alfie shakes his head.  
  
“I bet you can, too. But love, fucking _love_ , that’s… I can love, alright? I love Grace. I fucking love her. She’s breathing in my fucking head because I love her and can’t let go even though she’s gone, she’s gone, Alfie. She’s been gone for years. And I love my kids but I don’t _know_ them. I don’t know how to be around them. They’re looking at me like they’re wondering what I am, and maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t wondering the same fucking thing myself. So, I can _love._ But I can’t keep them. I lose everything I love. Everyone.”  
  
“Tommy –“  
  
“Don’t talk to me about love.”  
  
“Yeah, alright. And don’t you talk to me about love, either.”  
  
He opens his mouth and closes it. He’s breathing hard, still holding the cigarette that’s gone out at some point. It’s too warm in here, too little air, too many clocks, and Alfie, Alfie’s sitting in the fucking armchair, looking at him as if he’s fixable, as if with kind words and a light touch, he could be tamed like a foal. He takes off his tie and leaves it on the armrest, opens his vest and the top buttons of his shirt.  
  
“You still have tea?”  
  
He glances at the cup on the side table. “Yeah.”  
  
“Good. Drink it.”  
  
“It’s gotten cold.”  
  
“Too bad,” Alfie says, tapping a loose rhythm on the armrests. “We could go for a walk later, if you like.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Or now.”  
  
“Not yet. I have to…”  
  
“What?” Alfie asks, watching him.  
  
He shakes his head and turns his gaze away. There’s a clock on the bookshelf as well. What the fuck does Alfie even want of them, to be reminded that he’s going to die? It’s oddly comforting.  
  
“I have to… wait for it to pass. I can’t focus. I can’t walk now. I’d have to run.”  
  
“Well, we can’t have that,” Alfie says in a light voice. “I could never catch you.”  
  
“Just let me sit here for a while.”  
  
“Alright. You want me to be quiet?”  
  
“No. No, that’s not… Absolutely not.”  
  
“Good. You want me to talk about the seagulls?”  
  
Tommy licks his lips. They taste of ash. “No. You can… Just don’t tell me how easy love is.”  
  
“Okay. I have to admit, it was a bit unfair of me. I just… you were talking about _men like me_. And company. I don’t much like it when you rub that on my face.”  
  
“I wasn’t trying to…” He takes a deep breath. Maybe he was. “Sorry. It’s just that, I don’t know, you could do much better than to… have me sitting in your chair.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I kind of disagree.” Alfie waves his hand in a vague gesture. “I think this is pretty good, whatever the fuck this is, you coming here and shouting at me and drinking my tea and sitting in my chair.”  
  
“I never thought you’d think too little of yourself.”  
  
“It’s not that. It’s that I think too much of you.”  
  
He almost smiles.  
  
“I definitely think too much of you.”  
  
They go for a walk later. It’s already getting dark. The sea looks freezing and he doesn’t think he’d walk into it even if there wasn’t Alfie’s steady flow of nonsense keeping him on the ground. He can hear his own breaths in his head. His heart is beating like a man’s heart should. He thinks vaguely of the kids. Maybe he could buy them a dog, another dog, a puppy. Something cute and easy to hold onto. And then Alfie comes closer to him, settles beside him so that their arms brush against each other, and he forgets about the kids, the house, the business. The voices. They’re walking at the same pace.  
  
When they get back to the house, Alfie takes his coat for him and hangs it, then pats him lightly on the back and steps away again. It feels like a question. The maid has set up the table for dinner, and when his knee brushes against Alfie’s thigh under the table, he doesn’t pull away. It’s a simple thing, touching. It almost makes him feel like all of him is in this world. And it’s kind of funny, too, isn’t it, because he’s _touched_ people, a lot of people, it’s not like it’s foreign for him, but _this_ -  
  
Alfie leans forward to take the butter and touches his wrist. He blinks and looks at his hand on the table. Alfie’s already buttering a piece of bread, doesn’t look at him but pushes his thigh tighter against Tommy’s knee. He stares at Alfie until the man finally looks him in the eyes. And then it’s him who averts his gaze first. Alfie shrugs and goes back to eating.  
  
They drink more tea. Outside, it’s already dark. Alfie talks about his books and Tommy stops listening. He listens to the clocks instead, until finally Alfie asks something of him. Where he wants to sleep, that’s what Alfie’s asking, and he blinks and tries to concentrate.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I just thought,” Alfie says slowly, in a quiet voice that doesn’t even sound like a threat, “I just thought might ask.”  
  
“Okay,” Tommy says and crosses his legs. Then he takes a cigarette. His hands are trembling. But it’s quiet in his head except for Alfie’s clocks. That’s good. “So, what’re my options?”  
  
“Your options?”  
  
“Yeah. For sleeping.”  
  
He can feel Alfie watching him. He keeps his gaze in the cigarette, in his knees, in his own hands.  
  
“Your options,” Alfie says, “your options, Tommy, I’ll tell you your options. You can see sleep in the guestroom. Or you can…”  
  
“I can what?”  
  
“Or you can sleep in my bed.”  
  
“In your bed.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says. He sounds nervous and it’s fucking frightening, that’s what it is. “You can sleep in my bed. If you want to.”  
  
“And what exactly…”  
  
“Just ask me, Tommy.”  
  
“What exactly would we do? If I was sleeping in your bed?”  
  
“Whatever you want. Within reason.”  
  
“ _Within reason._ There’s not fucking _reason_ in this, Alfie.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Alfie says impossibly nicely. Tommy shifts in his chair. “I’ve always thought you were pretty. I’ve always thought you’re fucking brilliant, Tommy, I’ve always thought that. And I’ve also thought that you’d never be into any of the stuff that I like. So I’ve fucking buried my goddamn feelings. Don’t talk to me about _reason._ ”  
  
“Your _feelings._ ”  
  
“Yeah, that’s right.”  
  
“Alfie,” he says slowly, “I think I need you to spell it out for me, I mean, what’s on the table. If I sleep in your bed.”  
  
“Can’t you guess?”  
  
“I could. I can. I’m guessing that you want to have your cock in my arse.”  
  
Alfie clears his throat. “Bloody hell. Okay. Well. That was… that was a bit blunt, Tommy.”  
  
“But I’m not wrong.”  
  
“You aren’t…” Alfie takes a deep breath. “You aren’t exactly right, either. Yeah, fine, I wouldn’t mind having my cock in your arse. But that’s definitely not going to happen tonight. Probably not ever, but at least not tonight. Tonight, I think, if you’re feeling very bold, you could, I don’t know, you could let me jerk you off.”  
  
“Just like that?”  
  
“Just like that. But I warn you, I would also like to cuddle a little. So, really, if you come to my bed and let me touch you, what is going to happen is that I’m trying to fucking hold you in my arms. That’s’ what I’m going to try to do.”  
  
“Alfie –“  
  
“And I like kissing. Just so that you know.”  
  
“You want to kiss me?”  
  
“If you sleep in my bed, yeah, I think so, yeah, definitely. I’m definitely going to want to kiss you.”  
  
“I can’t picture it.”  
  
Alfie laughs in a breathless sound. “Oh, but I can, I fucking can, and easily. It’d be brilliant.”  
  
“You’re mad.”  
  
“Tell me something I don’t know.”  
  
“So, did I get this right? If I take my clothes off and come to your bed, you’re going to kiss me and then jerk me off?”  
  
Alfie licks his lips. It looks ridiculous, but for some reason Tommy can’t stop staring. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Unless you have other plans.”  
  
“No,” he says, “no, that sounds fine.”  
  
Alfie just stares at him.  
  
“We should get to it,” he says and stands up. “Before I change my mind.”  
  
Alfie doesn’t inch.  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothing,” Alfie says, tilting his head to the side. “But this has to be a trap. Or a joke.”  
  
“There’s only one way to find out,” he says and starts walking to Alfie’s bedroom. He unbuttons his shirt on the way. Better to be quick about it, or else he’s going to lose his nerve. For now, everything’s pleasantly quiet, everything in him is waiting, and what he’s waiting is apparently for Alfie Solomons to kiss him and make him come, which should make him think he’s finally lost whatever was left of his mind, but it doesn’t. It makes him feel alive. He pushes the door open to Alfie’s bedroom, shrugs off his unbuttoned shirt and folds it on the chair, then takes off his trousers. He's not going to get rid of his underpants, though. There’s no fucking way, not until they’re in the bed and he knows this is really happening. But then he turns to the door and sees Alfie just standing there, watching him as if he’s a fucking prize or something, and he tugs his pants to his ankles and kicks them off.  
  
“What the fuck,” Alfie says in a hoarse voice. He looks like he’s trying to keep his gaze in Tommy’s eyes, and then he gives up.  
  
Tommy’s ears are ringing, but otherwise, it’s silent. It’s all silent. “Did you want me with clothes on?”  
  
“No, no, I… I fucking want you in every way, really, but this is just… Are you trying to kill me or something?”  
  
“Yeah, no, not this time. Come on, Alfie.”  
  
“Tommy Shelby,” Alfie says, waving his hand, “Tommy fucking Shelby, in my bedroom, naked. Am I dreaming this?”  
  
“If you’re going to just talk, I’m going to put on my clothes and sleep in the guestroom.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says and walks to him, stands as close to him as possible without actually touching him. Alfie smells of tea and sweat and goddamn dust. He should get out of the house more. “No, we can’t have that. So, what do you want me to do to you?”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says. “Don’t make me ask for things because I don’t know how.”  
  
He thinks Alfie’s going to argue. He stays still, even though he’s naked and it’s fucking cold in here, and even though he’s not exactly unaffected of Alfie staring at him like this, his cock is still soft and it’s difficult to imagine how they could get from here to anything that’d make this worth the trouble. But when he thinks about taking a step back, maybe putting on some fucking clothes before he freezes, Alfie presses his palm against the back of his neck in a firm grip.  
  
“We should get to the bed,” Alfie says, pulling him closer.  
  
“Yeah. Okay.” But when Alfie lets go of him, he doesn’t move until Alfie grabs his arm and pulls him to the bed, shoves at him gently until he’s sitting on the mattress. He doesn’t have a fucking clue what he's doing here. He lets Alfie lean in until the easiest thing to do is to lie on his back and let Alfie climb onto him, one knee in between Tommy’s legs. It’s goddamn crazy. He’s not going to sleep with Alfie Solomons.  
  
He takes a deep breath and that’s when Alfie kisses him on the mouth.  
  
It's fucking absurd and awkward and everything he can think of. Alfie keeps muttering nonsense against his mouth and there’s no way he can _like_ this, but he does. He fucking does. He lets Alfie kiss him and kisses back, and it’s more gentle than he thought. Not that he’s been thinking about what it would be like. But he didn’t think it’d be gentle. He bites Alfie’s lower lip and Alfie laughs at him and shoves him against the mattress, and then kisses him so gently it’s driving him mad, until Alfie grabs his cock and then _that’s_ what’s driving him mad.  
  
But his head is silent.  
  
He pushes his hand into Alfie’s trousers and it’s worth it, it’s fucking worth it and ten times more just because of the way Alfie looks at him. He’s had his gun pointed at Alfie’s head but this is the first time he thinks he _has_ Alfie Solomons, he has Alfie in his hand and he could do anything, just anything. He could break the man but he’s not going to, no, he’s going to be nice and gentle and he’s going to make it so good for Alfie that the fucking bastard is going to forget how to speak. Only it turns out that he’s having some difficulties trying to concentrate, because apparently Alfie has the same goal in mind for him. Alfie’s telling him how good he is, and he wants to laugh, because he hasn’t been _good_ for a single day in his life, but he can’t find the words. He can’t find the voice. His head is fucking blank. And isn’t it fucking brilliant that the thing that finally can do that for him isn’t fucking booze, isn’t even laudanum. It’s Alfie Solomons’ hand on his cock.  
  
  
**  
  
He goes back after two weeks. He has a fucking headache and he’s driving too fast for a road like this, but if he slows down now, he’s going to turn back, and then he’s going to have to do this all from the beginning the next time. Or else, there’s not going to be the next time, which might be wise. What the hell is he coming back for, really? For a hand on his cock?  
  
He stops the car at the house and knocks on the door, then hovers on the steps, his hands pushed deep into his pockets. Alfie opens the door for him and steps out of the way, and he walks in and lights a cigarette. It turns out to be a mistake, because he can’t get rid of his coat when he’s holding a cigarette, and he’s not going to give the damn thing to Alfie to hold, is he? So, he just stands there.  
  
“Pissed off, are you?” Alfie asks, watching him. “And I haven’t even said anything yet.”  
  
He shakes his head, then breathes in. Yeah, he’s pissed off. No matter how much he gets in his life, he still ends up making decisions like this. “I came back,” he says, looking at the painting on the wall. It has a ship in it.  
  
“Yeah, I can see that,” Alfie says. He’s keeping his distance to Tommy, there’s at least three feet in between them. The last time, Tommy slept in his bed until the morning. Well, he didn’t _sleep_ , not much, but he lay on his back, watching the ceiling and Alfie’s neck and shoulders and arms and the wrinkled shirt Alfie still had on, and it was almost easy to be so close to him when one of them was asleep. “I’m glad,” Alfie says now, “you know I’m glad, Tommy, I’m just slightly worried that maybe this isn’t a social call, maybe you’ve come here to shoot me in the face again. To thank me for what I did to you the last time.”  
  
“I’m not…” Tommy bites his lip and puts the cigarette off so that he can take off the damn coat.  
  
“You aren’t? You aren’t going to shoot me? Well, that’s a relief, actually. Because I was kind of hoping we’d be over that, you know, in our relationship.”  
  
“We are,” he says and ignores the _relationship._ The hell it is. But for some goddamn reason he’s driven all the way to Margate _again_. “Aren’t you going to offer me tea?”  
  
“Sure,” Alfie says, still watching him carefully. “Now?”  
  
“Yeah, now.”  
  
“Okay. Fine. Would you like to go upstairs and sit down in your chair? I’ll go and tell Rachel and then I’ll be there in the moment.”  
  
He nods and starts walking before Alfie has time to go on with the nonsense. Upstairs, everything is exactly the same. There’s a cup of tea on Alfie’s side table, an open book on the floor. The clocks are off-rhythm like always. He walks a circle on the carpet until finally Alfie comes with two cups of tea.  
  
“Okay,” Alfie says, places one cup on the side table next to Tommy’s chair and then just stands there, in front of him. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”  
  
“Fuck off.”  
  
“Yeah, I thought so. But at least I asked. You look like a normal person does when they’re about to get shot.”  
  
He needs another cigarette. There’s no way he can sit down in that chair just now. “I didn’t come here for a fuck.”  
  
Alfie frowns at him. “You didn’t come here for a fuck? Alright.”  
  
“I don’t know why I –,” He breathes in and out. “I don’t know why I slept in your fucking bed. I don’t know.”  
  
“Yeah, me, neither,” Alfie says, taking a step closer to him. “I’ve been wondering about that, actually. And wondering if it’s going to happen again or not.”  
  
“Don’t touch me,” he says, because Alfie’s close enough to him now that he could easily grab the bastard’s shirt or something, maybe shove Alfie at the chest. He blinks at his hands.  
  
Alfie raises his hands in a mock gesture of surrender. “Alright. But I’m sure you realise that you have the advantage here. You know I’m pretty much up for anything. You can just sit there and drink my tea or do anything you like.”  
  
“I can’t _sit._ ”  
  
“Yeah, I see. Still don’t want me to touch you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Okay,” Alfie says and takes another step, stopping at Tommy’s face. He’s not much taller than Tommy, not exactly, and he always looks like he’s aching somewhere, these days, so maybe it’s his fucking personality that’s making it possible for him to hover over Tommy like that. “Okay,” he says and puts his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, squeezes it through the fabric. Tommy bites his lip a bit too hard. “Too bad,” Alfie says, “since you’re already here. It’d be so _easy_ to… but you don’t want to. I get it. You aren’t like me.”  
  
“Shut up, Alfie.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, stroking his palm up and down on Tommy’s arm. “You poor idiot, you come here and then you’re, like, what the hell am I going to do with this, because I’m nothing like poor Alfie. I’m nothing like this fucker who likes other men.”  
  
“Shut up,” Tommy says again, only he can’t put weight into the words. “I didn’t mean that.”  
  
“Yeah, you did. _Men like you_ , you said. Men like me. Since we’re different species. And here you are, playing with me.”  
  
“I’m not…” He swallows and shoves Alfie at the chest. Then he grabs the front of Alfie’s shirt and pulls him closer.  
  
“You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing.”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“Well, I’ve known that for years,” Alfie says in a light tone. “I always knew you were just fucking around and seeing how it goes. So, what now?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“Alright. I’ll suggest, then. Maybe you’d like to let go of my shirt and sit down and drink your tea.”  
  
“Alfie,” he says and pulls Alfie closer, only there’s not much space anymore. “I can’t do that. I haven’t slept in… I don’t know.”  
  
“Okay,” Alfie says and places his hand low on Tommy’s back. “Okay, what about this? You sit in that chair and I’ll suck you off.”  
  
He coughs and ignores the way Alfie’s grinning at him. “I can’t fucking _sit down_ , Alfie.”  
  
“Yeah, alright,” Alfie says and lets go of him. He grabs Alfie’s shirt tighter before he can realise it. “Bedroom, then.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“See if you can make me suck your cock. But I won’t do it here. I can’t fucking wrestle on the floor, Tommy, it just won’t do, I’m going to hurt my knee and I don’t want that, it’s a fucking nuisance, that’s what it is.”  
  
“Wrestle?”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, taking a step back. Tommy follows him. “You look like you might want to. To be honest, I’m a little worried, because you look like you’re going to scratch and bite and kick me in the groin and everything. You have that face on. Your fighting face. Your dirty fighting face. But I’m going to take that risk, because I’m bigger than you and I should be able to hold you down.”  
  
“And if I win, you’ll suck my cock.”  
  
“Yeah. You’ll have to make me.” Alfie blinks. “But nicely. I’m an old man, Tommy.”  
  
“And if you win?”  
  
Alfie grins.  
  
“You aren’t going to win,” Tommy says and swallows. “Bedroom?”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, and then there’s that look again, that look in his eyes that suggests Tommy’s something precious instead of a half-mad man with insomnia and an averagely bad addiction for opium. He turns his back to Alfie and walks to the bedroom, takes off the most of his clothes and then watches Alfie do the same, even though it’s weird, it’s like they’re lovers or something, but they aren’t, and his head can’t keep up with all this. But it doesn’t have to, thank god, it doesn’t have to because Alfie pushes him to the bed and shoves him against the mattress and then all that there is is Alfie’s weight on him, Alfie’s hands on him, Alfie’s knee against his crotch, and he’s not sure if it’s meant to feel good or bad.  
  
It’s perfect. He wriggles himself free and somehow manages to climb onto Alfie, but he can’t make Alfie suck his cock like this, the angle is just impossible, and when he shifts, Alfie manages to throw him off. He’s faster but Alfie’s stronger and this is bullshit, he knows it, this is fucking insane, and the maid is going to think they’re mad, and _he_ thinks they’re mad, but Alfie’s breathing hard and pressing him down and pressing his hard cock against the inside of Tommy’s thigh, and all that is in Tommy’s mind is his own heartbeat for fucking once, and it’s good. It’s good. He kisses Alfie on the mouth and Alfie freezes, the fucking idiot, stares at Tommy as if he’s in love or something, and Tommy kicks him in the thigh with his knee. He thinks Alfie’s laughing but can’t be sure, they’re too out of breath, and then the laughing stops.  
  
He sits on Alfie’s chest and puts his thumb into Alfie’s mouth. Alfie could easily throw him off and he almost points that out, because the point was _making_ Alfie do it, wasn’t it? But turns out that he can’t bother. Alfie’s kind of licking his thumb, taking glances at his cock, and he’s so hard he’s almost leaking already.  
  
“Alright,” Alfie says around his thumb, “come on. Lie down.”  
  
This wasn’t part of the deal, he thinks vaguely, and lies down on his back. Alfie sits up and grabs his knees so tight he couldn’t even kick Alfie in the face if he wanted. He closes his eyes and then opens them again. He’s going to fucking watch Alfie Solomons sucking his cock.  
  
“I have to admit,” Alfie says, tugging Tommy’s pants down his thighs, “I kind of fooled you here, mate. Because this is for me. This is for me. I’m going to make you come in my mouth and then I’m going to be wanking over it for _weeks._ ”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Impatient, are we?” Alfie asks. He sounds like he’s not breathing properly. “You asked me once if I’m thinking about your cock. Well, now I am.”  
  
“Alfie,” Tommy says, touching Alfie’s chin. He could get a good grip, there’s so much beard. But Alfie seems motivated enough anyway. “If you aren’t going to suck my cock now, I’m going to fucking get off this bed and put my clothes on and go drink that tea.”  
  
Alfie grins. “Oh, but we can’t have that, can we?” And then he leans down and takes Tommy’s cock in his mouth.  
  
The beard. There’s so much beard. And Alfie’s grip on his knees is so tight he can’t fucking wriggle. He could maybe push but he tries not to, until Alfie lets go of his knee and bloody _slaps_ him on the inside of his thigh, and he almost kicks Alfie in the shoulder but ends up pushing deeper into Alfie’s mouth instead. Alfie grabs his hips and keeps him still, and _shit_ it’s good, it’s good to be held down. He didn’t know he wanted this. He didn’t fucking _know._ He tries to keep his eyes open but can’t in the end, and then he comes in Alfie’s mouth. His heart is in his throat. The black behind his eyes is empty, no voices, no faces, nothing.  
  
Then he realises vaguely that Alfie’s licking him clean.  
  
He opens his eyes. “That can’t be good.”  
  
“It’s not,” Alfie says, grimacing. “Not to my personal taste, anyway. I’m doing it for the show.”  
  
“For the show.”  
  
“Yeah. And now I’m going to kiss you.”  
  
“The fuck you are.”  
  
“I am,” Alfie says and climbs on him. “And I don’t think you can stop me. To be completely honest, mate, you look like you just came in someone’s mouth. You aren’t going to push me away.”  
  
He's smiling but apparently there’s nothing he can do about it. If someone came for them now, he’s not sure if he remembered how to use the gun. “You think so?”  
  
“Yeah, I think so,” Alfie says and kisses him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tea, conversation, a bed, and sugar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, at this chapter we've reached the beginning of season 5 in the timeline. I'm trying to fit the rest of this story in the gaps of the season, with Tommy and Alfie's... relationship as an AU element!

It’s midnight already. He drives almost to Alfie’s front door, then knocks on the door until he can hear Alfie’s voice, muffled through the door. Alfie’s swearing a lot but also telling the maid to stay out of the sight. Tommy takes a step back and waits, and then Alfie opens the door, only slightly, enough to peer out.  
  
“Oh, fucking hell,” Alfie says, putting the gun away. “What the hell are you doing here, Tommy? You woke Rachel up. You could’ve just called, mate, you have a goddamn phone, don’t you?”  
  
Tommy licks his lips. He shouldn’t have come, but there’s no reason to point that out, is there, when he's already at Alfie’s door.  
  
“Just get in already,” Alfie says, stepping away from the door. Tommy walks in and walks a small circle as Alfie locks the door again. The maid is standing in the hallway, her arms crossed over her chest. “Look,” Alfie says, glancing at the maid, “it’s just Tommy. The fucking idiot forgot to call us and tell that he’s coming. You can go back to sleep, Rachel, it’s alright. I’ll take care of the fucker.”  
  
The maid goes. Tommy takes his coat off and then doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he takes a cigarette. “You aren’t dressed.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Alfie says slowly, “no, that’s what you get when you just appear in the middle of the night. What, does this offend you? I could be wearing much less clothes, let me tell you, I could be standing here stark naked, with nothing but a gun, just because some fucking idiot chose to start kicking my door in – hey, give me that cigarette.”  
  
Tommy realises vaguely that he’s not lit the cigarette, he’s only holding it, and his hand is trembling. He lets Alfie to take the cigarette and grab his wrist.  
  
“Okay, you need tea,” Alfie says, “or probably you need to fucking _sleep_ for once, but I guess that’s not an option. What’s going on? Someone died?”  
  
“No,” he says and grabs Alfie’s arm over his elbow. It’s meant to tell Alfie that he can fucking let go of Tommy’s wrist, but it turns out that he can’t let go of Alfie’s arm. “Yeah.”  
  
Alfie squeezes his wrist tighter, pulling him closer. “What? Who? When? Why? Are you kids –“  
  
“The kids are fine,” he says and takes a deep breath, “everyone’s fucking fine, Alfie, you don’t need to… You’re _holding my hand._ ”  
  
“No, I’m not. You said someone died. Was it my dog? Is that why you’re looking at me like that? Because if you killed me dog, I swear –“  
  
“I didn’t kill your dog. Can you let go of my hand?”  
  
“No, I don’t think so,” Alfie says but does it anyway, only then he puts his hand on Tommy’s shoulder and starts pushing him towards the kitchen. “You’re going to eat a sandwich now, Tommy, that’s what you’re going to do. You can’t just come to my house and tell me someone died and look at me like that. We’ll have tea and then you’ll tell me what the fuck is wrong with you this time.”  
  
He laughs without meaning to. It sounds like a dead man’s laugh, but Alfie doesn’t seem to realise, only shoves him to the kitchen and starts fussing with the kettle. He sits down at the table and waits, and soon there’s a sandwich on a plate in front of him, a cup of tea at his hand’s reach, and Alfie sitting across the table, staring at him. He bites his lip.  
  
“Eat,” Alfie says. “Then talk.”  
  
He tries to eat, only it’s surprisingly difficult with Alfie watching him. He can’t remember when he last ate, but it can’t have been long, because he’s not feeling hungry.  
  
Well, the laudanum does that, too.  
  
“I heard you had to shoot a horse,” Alfie says in a quiet voice. “Is that it?”  
  
Tommy shakes his head.  
  
“Shit. Is it about the politics? Because the way I see it, you should get rid of that bullshit.”  
  
“It’s not that. Stop guessing.”  
  
“Fucking tell me then.”  
  
“I had a…” He fills his mouth with tea. Alfie’s eyes fall onto his throat when he swallows. _Fucking hell._ And it doesn’t even make sense that he came here tonight, it doesn’t make sense that for some goddamn reason he apparently thinks he needs to tell Alfie about this. “There was this journalist. He knew me from… He did a story about me years ago, in Birmingham, but now he wanted to… He was asking questions.”  
  
He looks Alfie in the eyes. He’s got nothing to explain to Alfie, of course not, it’s just that… Arthur called him this afternoon that they did the job. He took laudanum and sat behind his deck, watching the horse in the painting watch him back for what felt like ages, and still he was thinking about what he was going to tell Alfie. It’s been five weeks since Alfie sucked him off, five weeks of not coming to Margate. Five fucking weeks that feel much longer.  
  
“What, then?” Alfie asks, narrowing his eyes. “Did you kill him, Tommy? Because that’d be just like you. I just wish you didn’t do a bad job about it. Is that what this is, you coming to me like this, looking like you’re going to fucking crumble into pieces on my floor? Did you mess it up somehow?”  
  
“No. No, I didn’t. I didn’t… I didn’t do it myself.”  
  
Alfie laughs shortly. “Of course not. Tommy, take more tea. It’s going to be alright. You clearly haven’t been sleeping much. You can sleep here. It’s going to be alright. As long as you don’t kill my dog.”  
  
“He was like us.”  
  
Alfie blinks at him. “What?”  
  
“You,” he says and clears his throat, “like you.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“Don’t make me say it.”  
  
“I think you’re going to have to fucking say it,” Alfie says in a low voice, but he sounds more tired than angry. “What do you mean, like me?”  
  
“I had someone dig up things about him. Of course I did, that was… But what came out was… He was taking walks in the park.”  
  
Alfie leans over the table and takes the cigarette from Tommy’s hands. He hadn’t realised he was holding one again. He tries to drink of his tea, but Alfie snatches it as well. “Takes walks in the park? What the fuck would you know about that? Why would you care?”  
  
“With other men,” he says and makes himself to look Alfie in the eyes. He did nothing wrong. Well, it was kind of wrong to kill the man, strictly speaking. But it’s absurd that he thinks Alfie’s going to be angry at him. It’s fucking absurd. “He takes walks. With other men.”  
  
“So,” Alfie says in a blank voice, “you had him shot because he was a queer, is that it?”  
  
“No, of course not, that’s just… Give me that cigarette.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says. “Why the fuck are you telling this to me, Tommy?”  
  
“I don’t know. I didn’t kill him because of that, alright?”  
  
“You better not have, because if you did and then came to brag me about it –“  
  
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Alfie. I was talking to him, you know, I was telling him that I know that he… And I started thinking that it could be, I don’t know, it could be me instead, and that’s just fucking stupid, because I’m not…”  
  
“You aren’t like that,” Alfie says with a cold voice. “You don’t fucking take walks with other men.”  
  
“I kissed you.”  
  
Alfie nods. “Yeah.”  
  
“And jerked you off.”  
  
“Yeah, that too.”  
  
“And slept in your…”  
  
“In my fucking bed, that’s right.”  
  
"I had to have him shot. It made sense.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. But what I’d still like to know is that why the hell you’re telling me, Tommy, because you haven’t got to that yet.”  
  
“I don’t _know._ It was alright. I took laudanum and then I just… couldn’t stop thinking about…”  
  
“Thinking about what?”  
  
“You. And how I… Is that what you do? In London? What you did? You took walks in a park and…”  
  
“Me?” Alfie says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. But the way he’s looking at Tommy is… He doesn’t look angry anymore. He almost looks like he’s pitying Tommy a little. “Not really. I don’t know if you noticed, but people know me in London. I didn’t go walking around in parks.”  
  
Tommy nods and clenches his fists on the table. Maybe it’d help if he took more laudanum. Just a little. He’s not going to sleep properly anyway.  
  
“I could usually find company if I wanted to.”  
  
“But I’m not like that. I have a wife.”  
  
Alfie laughs in a surprised tone. “You have a _wife?_ ”  
  
“Yeah. I have… I’m not…”  
  
“It’s not either or,” Alfie says, his voice more serious now. “Some people, they just like both. But this can’t be goddamn news to you.”  
  
Tommy shakes his head.  
  
“So,” Alfie says after a short silence and pushes Tommy’s cup of tea back to him. “Drink this. _So,_ you had a nice little chat with this queer man and then had him killed, and now you’re wondering what you are. Is that it? You want me to kiss you or something?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Alfie blinks. “Yeah?”  
  
“Probably,” Tommy says and drinks of his tea. It’s cold now. “Later, yeah. But this man, this journalist… I didn’t kill him because he’s like us, Alfie.”  
  
“Okay,” Alfie says, watching him carefully. “Okay, I believe you.”  
  
“I don’t care that he’s like us. _Was_ like us. I just… I had to. He was going to…”  
  
“Yeah, I know. You want a bath or something?”  
  
He shakes his head. “I can’t be alone.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah. No.”  
  
“And you came to me instead of going home.”  
  
“I had to see you. It doesn’t…” He takes a deep breath. “It doesn’t feel much different, kissing you.”  
  
“Of course it doesn’t, you bloody idiot,” Alfie says gently. “We’re all just fucking human beings, Tommy. It doesn’t make that much of a difference.”  
  
“Does to you, though.”  
  
“Well, there’re men who only like to sleep with women, or so I’ve heard,” Alfie says, smiling just a little. “That’s weird but what can you do. We all are a little strange. So, this is what we’re going to do, Tommy, we’re going to draw you a bath because frankly, you look like you’ve been sweating through your clothes. Maybe it’s the laudanum because it’s sure isn’t the weather and I know it’s not the killing. And then you’re going to sleep in my bed and we’ll kiss if you want to.”  
  
“If I want to.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s right.”  
  
“We’re going to kiss.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says. He looks happy.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“I told Lizzie,” he says to Alfie the next time he’s at Alfie’s. To be precise, he’s in Alfie’s bed, smoking a cigarette Alfie objected but not very pointedly probably because they jerked each other off just a few minutes ago. There’s dried cum on his stomach and on his thighs and Alfie’s fingers are lazily stroking his hair, and all in all he shouldn’t feel so good about all of it, but he does.  
  
“Alright,” Alfie says. “You told her what?”  
  
He recognises the moment when Alfie realises. Alfie’s fingers go still in his hair and the rhythm of his breath falters for half a second.  
  
“Bloody hell, Tommy. You didn’t.”  
  
“She can keep a secret.”  
  
“I bet she can,” Alfie says, his fingers starting to stroke Tommy’s hair again. “That’s not what I was referring to when I said, and I quote, _bloody hell, Tommy, you didn’t_.”  
  
“I mean it. She won’t tell anyone.”  
  
“Well,” Alfie says slowly, “I’m supposed to be dead. Does she know that?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Alright. Then I’ll get back to my original point. What exactly did you tell her?”  
  
Tommy bites his lip.  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, “so I thought. If you were using as many words with her, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it seems highly probable that something might’ve gone amiss in that communication there.”  
  
“I told her we’re fucking.”  
  
Alfie pulls his hand away from Tommy’s hair and props himself up with a grunt, leaning against his elbow. “Really?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“But we aren’t fucking.”  
  
“Well, I didn’t… What should I have told her instead? That we kiss and jerk each other off?”  
  
“I blew you once, don’t forget that. And actually, I think you should’ve told her nothing.”  
  
“She’s my wife. I tell her what I want to.”  
  
“I’m not complaining. Tommy, look at me.”  
  
He takes a deep breath and turns to look at Alfie. He’s pretty sure Alfie’s still a bit flushed from what they did a moment ago. And he doesn’t look like he’s complaining, either. He looks like he’s confused and delighted and not bothering to hide it.  
  
“We’re going to get cold,” Tommy says.  
  
“You’re so needy,” Alfie says but tugs the blanket over them. “You told your fucking _wife_ , Tommy. Why the hell did you do that?”  
  
“She’s a good woman. She’s probably the best woman I could’ve ever had. She always has my back.”  
  
“Too bad you don’t love her, then,” Alfie says in a quiet voice. “Not like you loved the other one.”  
  
“Don’t…” He glances at Alfie and then closes his eyes. He’s too fucking tired to argue about this. “Yeah, that’s too bad. Anyway, felt like a wise thing to do.”  
  
“Excuse me,” Alfie says, shifting closer to him so that their thighs brush under the blanket. He almost flinches. At least his eyes are closed so he won’t see how smug Alfie is looking right now. “Excuse me, Tommy, you silly idiot, you felt like it was a wise thing to do to tell your wife that you’re fucking your good friend Alfie Solomons?”  
  
“We aren’t actually fucking, are we,” he says. He’s thought about it, a couple of times. Not seriously, of course. The whole business seems so uncomfortable and, well, unnecessarily difficult. He’s almost certain he’ll never want to have Alfie’s cock in his ass, so there’s no reason to be thinking about it. And maybe that’s why he is, in fact, thinking about it.  
  
“Shut up,” Alfie says, running his fingers back and forth on Tommy’s arm. It’s partly soothing and partly just fucking frustrating. “That’s just semantics.”  
  
“Is what?”  
  
“So, you really told her it’s me?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says and grabs Alfie’s wrist, stopping his hand. He can feel Alfie’s heartbeat faintly against his thumb. He’s fucking glad he missed on the beach. “She knows me. She knew something was going on. She thought it was a woman. She asked me not to bring anyone to the house. And I told her about you. She’d guessed half of it already.”  
  
“You think she’s happier when she knows it’s not another woman?”  
  
“I don’t know if she cares either way. We are… we’ve been friends for a long time, Alfie, her and me. I paid her for sex for years.”  
  
“I bet she’s in love with you, though.”  
  
He swallows.  
  
“Happens to the best of us,” Alfie says, then fumbles with his hand and ends up patting Tommy on the stomach. There’s dried cum right there, probably stuck in the hair. “You should draw us a bath, Tommy. This is disgusting, this mess. Anyway, do you think she’s going to try to shoot me? Should I be worried, is she better at it than you?”  
  
“No,” he says. Alfie’s stroking his stomach now, his fingers almost intent. “No, she’s not better, and you shouldn’t be worried. I’m giving her everything she wants.”  
  
“Except for you.”  
  
“She knows I can’t. There’s not enough left.”  
  
“You seem adequately whole now,” Alfie says and wraps his fingers loosely around Tommy’s cock.  
  
“What’re you doing? I’m not going to get hard again.”  
  
“Yeah, no, I know. Don’t worry about that.”  
  
“It’s my cock, Alfie, not a fucking kitten to fondle.”  
  
“Tell me to stop, then,” Alfie says and after a short silence, takes a deep breath. “So, your wife knows about us and isn’t going to shoot me.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So, there’s _us._ ”  
  
“Apparently.”  
  
“Maybe you’re just using me to figure out if you actually want to fuck men or not.”  
  
“No, I think it’s about you.”  
  
“About me –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re trying to figure out if you actually want to fuck me.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“I can’t believe you’re letting me have your cock in my hand like this.”  
  
“I can’t, either.”  
  
“And I have to tell you, you seem a little less dangerous when your cock is soft.”  
  
“Don’t talk about my cock, Alfie.”  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says and shifts closer to him. “Tommy, you fucking idiot, I hope you realise that I actually like you.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And also I hope you realise that I’m going to fucking fall asleep soon. I’m an old man, I can’t just stay awake all night like you can.”  
  
“I can’t either. I just do. You can’t hold onto my cock if you’re asleep, Alfie.”  
  
“Well, I’m going to try. But I think we should kiss first.”  
  
“Okay,” he says and rolls onto his side.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“So, tell me something.”  
  
“What?” he asks, his eyes still closed. It’s the late summer and it hasn’t been raining for _days._ His skin is damp with sweat and it isn’t helping that Alfie’s wrapped himself around him.  
  
“Something. Anything. About your life.”  
  
“My life,” he says and tries not to sound bitter.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Well, you know.”  
  
“No, I don’t know,” Alfie says so close to the back of his neck than he can feel Alfie’s mouth brushing against his skin. “I think I’ve started forgetting. And let me tell you, it’s not that I want get back to it, back to London and the whole fucking mess in there, I don’t _want_ people to need me and try to cross me and try to fucking stab me in the back… I don’t want to get back. But I’m starting to forget what it’s like.”  
  
“It’s a fucking mess, that’s what it is.”  
  
Alfie’s quiet for a long time, then takes a deep breath. “You still fucking your wife?”  
  
“Yeah. Of course.”  
  
“ _Of course._ ”  
  
“Alfie –,” he says and rolls onto his back to look at Alfie, and then he drops the rest. Alfie’s looking at him with the whole fucking book in his eyes. He doesn’t want to read it. “I want tea.”  
  
“You want tea?” Alfie says slowly, pushing his fingers into Tommy’s hair. “Alright. I’ll get you tea. We’ll have tea. Are you happy?”  
  
He's not sure if he’s been happy for a fucking day since he went to France all those years ago. “Yeah.”  
  
“You’re a very bad liar,” Alfie says, stroking his hair. “I’ll get you your tea.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Tommy. Tommy. Tommy –“  
  
“What?”  
  
“You aren’t sleeping, are you?”  
  
He opens his eyes. The rain is hitting the windows and Alfie’s leaning over him, drawing circles on his stomach with his fingertips. “Apparently not.”  
  
“It’s fucking afternoon. You can’t sleep in the fucking _afternoon._ ”  
  
“I’m tired.”  
  
“Well, yeah, since you aren’t sleeping at night.” Alfie’s silent for the moment. “What’s that about, anyway? Nightmares?”  
  
“That, too.”  
  
“Opium?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He grabs Alfie’s hand and holds it steady against his stomach.  
  
“You fucking idiot,” Alfie says in a soft voice. “You should quit it.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“It’s like you’re trying to slowly kill yourself.”  
  
He sighs and rolls onto his side, still holding Alfie’s hand in his. “Well, isn’t that better? Better than doing it quickly?”  
  
“You don’t mean that.”  
  
“Yeah. No, I don’t.”  
  
“You’re a fucking liar, Tommy.”  
  
“You’ve told me that before.”  
  
“I don’t understand why I let you crawl into my bed.”  
  
He closes his eyes, playing with Alfie’s fingers and listening to his breathing. “Makes the two of us.”  
  
Alfie snorts. “No, no, let’s be honest for a second here. I’d have taken you to my bed the moment I first saw you. If I had thought you’d be willing.”  
  
“I’m glad you didn’t. I was half-dead, if I remember right.”  
  
“Yeah, your nose was bleeding. Really, you looked like you had dug out of a fucking grave and put on a suit and then somehow crawled to my office. And there you were, trying to look so intimidating, a tiny man in his stupid suit. And you stared at me like you thought you could stare me to death.”  
  
“I never tried.”  
  
“Why me?” Alfie says, turning to him. He peers open one eye. “Tommy, seriously, why me? Why do you keep driving to Margate?”  
  
“Maybe I just like the sea.”  
  
“Yeah, right. That’s why you spend all your time in my bed.”  
  
“Only recently.”  
  
“Are you doing this to mess with me?” Alfie asks, sounding almost serious. “Because if you are, it’s working splendidly.”  
  
“I’m not –“  
  
“Because I like you, Tommy. I fucking like you. I dare think that if someone paid me to cross you now, I couldn’t anymore. I just couldn’t.”  
  
“Shocking.”  
  
“Shut up. It _is._ ”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I’d fucking, I don’t know, I’d do _things_ for you, Tommy.”  
  
He squeezes Alfie’s hand.  
  
“Goddamn _things._ ”  
  
“Maybe you could get me a cup of tea, then,” he says. “With sugar, thank you.”  
  
“Tea? You’re easy.”  
  
He snorts.  
  
“Well, yeah,” Alfie says, poking him in the ribs, “right, you aren’t. You’re the most fucking difficult man I’ve ever met. Took me _years_ to get you to my bed. And what am I getting out of it, really? You come to my fucking bed, sleep in the middle of the afternoon and then ask for _tea._ ”  
  
“I can go ask Rachel, if you like.”  
  
“Alright,” Alfie says. “No sugar for me, please.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No tea, a little bit of conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I think it's Explicit. Tell me if you disagree.
> 
> After this chapter, there's one more to go. And then there's a tiny sequel!

It's late in the summer. He’s talked about politics the whole day and now that he could think about something else, his brain just won’t stop. He stops the car at the side of the house and walks to the front door. There’s wind but no rain, the sea is dark grey and he can’t hear the seagulls. The speech he made in the parliament today is still clinging into his mouth, tasting of tea with too much honey. But there were some parts in it that he kind of actually meant.  
  
“Fuck, it’s freezing in here,” Alfie says, opening the door for him. “I thought it was summer.”  
  
“Well, not anymore,” he says and walks in.  
  
“You look fucking tired, Tommy.”  
  
“Well, I…” he says and then just stares at Alfie for a few seconds. He has the vial in his pocket, like always. He could just take a sip. He’s trying not to, with Alfie. The bastard talks so much nonsense that usually Tommy’s ghosts stay quiet while he’s in here.  
  
He lets Alfie give him tea, make him eat a sandwich, and take him to the bedroom. It’s all familiar now. He sits down on the edge of the mattress and undoes his shoelaces, watching from the corner of his eye as Alfie takes off his clothes, leaving only his underwear. Sometimes they leave everything on that doesn’t need to go. But lately, Alfie’s been trying to get rid of Tommy’s clothes and he’s not been very subtle about it. So, Tommy takes off his trousers as well, then shrugs off his vest and unbuttons his shirt. When he’s ready, Alfie’s already climbing to the bed next to him, muttering something about his damn knee. Apparently, the damn knee has gotten worse again.  
  
“Listen,” Tommy hears himself saying, “we always do the same stuff.”  
  
Alfie freezes, his hand already reaching for Tommy’s cock. “What, you don’t like our _stuff?_ ”  
  
“No, I like it,” he says and grabs Alfie’s wrist, takes his hand in between his two palms. “I like it.”  
  
“You want me to blow you or something?” Alfie asks, his voice a little hoarse. He still sounds suspicious but doesn’t pull his hand away from Tommy’s grip.  
  
Tommy licks his lips. He wants laudanum or he wants a cigarette, he can’t tell which one, but the thing is, his heartbeat is everything he can hear. There’re no ghosts here, with them, now. It’s just him, and he’s fucking nervous. “You never ask me of anything.”  
  
“I ask you plenty,” Alfie says, but it’s clear in his tone that he knows what Tommy’s saying.  
  
“I come to you and you jerk me off. You blow me if I ask you to. But you never ask anything of me. You don’t…”  
  
“Tommy,” Alfie says, “I like what we do. And I started it. I’m getting exactly what I want.”  
  
“You never ask if you can fuck me.”  
  
Alfie just stares at him for a few seconds. He takes a deep breath. Well, there it is. It’s not like he hasn’t been thinking about it, lately, when it’s become obvious that he keeps coming back to Alfie. He’s been thinking about it, and he can’t figure out if he wants to or not, but it’s fucking frustrating that Alfie doesn’t even _ask_. Doesn’t he want to? Certainly he’s done it with other people. Other men.  
  
“Fine,” Alfie says slowly. “Fine, I’ll ask.”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
“I just hope you don’t have your gun with you now, mate, since it’d be a little inconvenient if you tried to shoot me.”  
  
“I’m not going to fucking try to shoot you, Alfie.”  
  
“It’s hard to tell, when it comes to you,” Alfie says and swallows visibly. “Can I fuck you?”  
  
Tommy bites his lip. “I don’t fucking know. How does it even work?”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“It’s just, it seems pretty difficult to me, the whole concept.”  
  
“Well,” Alfie says, his eyes going back and forth on Tommy’s face, “obviously, it takes a little time. I suppose you know that I’d like to… be nice about it. So, we’d do it slowly.”  
  
“Slowly –“  
  
“With fingers first.”  
  
“Fingers –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“In my ass.”  
  
“Fucking hell, Tommy,” Alfie says a bit breathlessly.  
  
“And you think I’m going to like that.”  
  
“I…” Alfie takes a deep breath. “Well, I think that there’s a good chance that you’re going to like it eventually. But you’ve got to trust me a little at first, I’m afraid.”  
  
“What if -,” Tommy begins and makes a vague gesture that’s supposed to help but it doesn’t. “What if I want to –“  
  
“What if you want to fuck me? Is that it? That’s what you’re trying to ask me?” Alfie frowns. “I don’t usually do it that way, Tommy. But we’ll give it a try if you want to. Just know that I’m going to fucking talk you through it, because you haven’t got a goddamn clue what you’re doing, right?”  
  
“No, I… We can do it the other way around.”  
  
Alfie blinks at him. “The other way around –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“In the distant future or –“  
  
“No. I’m going to lose my nerve.”  
  
“You didn’t have a fucking nerve to begin with, Tommy,” Alfie says, his words coming out rushed. He’s staring at Tommy with wide eyes. “What’re you saying?”  
  
“I’m saying,” he says and clears his throat, “that if you want to fuck me, you can.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Just like that?”  
  
“Well, no,” he says, “I heard you’re supposed to put your fingers in there first.”  
  
Alfie stares at him, looking so shocked that he almost laughs.  
  
“Alfie,” he says and leans closer, puts his hand on Alfie’s thigh. Alfie kind of flinches a little. _Bloody hell._ “Stop looking at me like that. I’ve done impossible things before.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to ask, you know,” Alfie says. He sounds like he’s just seen a horse flying by. “Because really, after all this time, it feels like a goddamn achievement that I’ve got you in my fucking bed, one way or another, I mean, it feels like I’ve won a fucking prize when you let me touch your cock. So, I told myself, _Alfie, this is fucking great. You’ve got Tommy fucking Shelby coming in your hand and yeah, occasionally, asking you to blow him. It’s great._ No reason to get greedy. I’m not a greedy man, Tommy.”  
  
Tommy laughs. He sounds nervous but what the hell, they both already knew that.  
  
“But this time I actually mean it,” Alfie says. “I wasn’t going to ask. It’s just fucking, Tommy. Yeah, sure, I’d like it very much if you wanted me to… But it’s just fucking. I wouldn’t want you to get pissed off at me and fucking leave because of a detail like that.”  
  
“I’m not going to leave. I suggested it.”  
  
“Yeah, you did. Which is, I don’t know, which is a little difficult to grasp.”  
  
“Alfie,” he says and licks his lips, “Alfie, you need to stop talking now.”  
  
“Am I talking too much for you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Alfie takes a deep breath and nods. Then he puts his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, slowly like approaching a spooked horse. He strokes his thumb back and forth on Tommy’s throat. It should feel like a threat, but it doesn’t. “Maybe I’m a little nervous, too.”  
  
“Maybe you are.”  
  
“Maybe I’m thinking, _Alfie, you’ve got to get it right or he won’t let you try again._ ”  
  
Tommy opens his mouth and then closes it. That’s probably true. He doesn’t fucking know why he thinks he’s going to let Alfie try it at all _._  
  
“But,” Alfie says, chewing on his lower lip, “did you want to try it _now?_ Or after tea?”  
  
“We just had tea.”  
  
“Oh, right. Okay. But maybe you’d like to, I don’t know, discuss the weather first?”  
  
“Alfie,” he says, turning to face the man. They’re still sitting on the edge of the mattress like two idiots who’ve been talking about fucking for what feels like an hour but probably is five minutes. “What do I do?”  
  
Alfie looks at him, his mouth half-open, his thumb stopping at the point where Tommy can feel it against his throat when he swallows. For some reason, it’s comforting.  
  
“Alright, then,” Alfie says, “alright. Would you mind, well, would you mind taking the rest of your clothes off for me?”  
  
“That necessary?”  
  
Alfie looks worried for a moment, then blinks and gives him a tiny grin. “Well, sorry to shock you, but what we’re going to do here, it’s going to be a little difficult if you keep your underpants on.”  
  
He doesn’t grin back. He doesn’t have it in him right now. But it makes it a little easier when Alfie’s not looking at him like he’s going to fucking break into pieces any moment. He takes off his underwear. There’s nothing new to _this._ They’ve done this part many times. Alfie’s fucking seen him naked. But his ears are ringing when he counts his damn heartbeat for a few seconds and then tries to crawl onto his knees.  
  
Alfie’s touch on his shoulder grows heavier. “And what do you think you’re doing?”  
  
He swallows. “I’m getting on my –“  
  
“Knees. The fuck you are, Tommy. Well,” Alfie pats him on the shoulder, “later, yeah, maybe, it’s going to be easier that way. But for now, I want to fucking see your face. I won’t have you making faces at me when I can’t see. I want you on your back.”  
  
He bites his lip. _Shit._ The thought of being on his back, while Alfie’s -  
  
“Alright?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says, his voice coming out thin. Then he settles himself on the mattress, flat on his back.  
  
“Fucking hell, Tommy, this is –“  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
Alfie grabs Tommy’s knees and pushes them slightly apart. Tommy closes his eyes. He fucking asked for this. He asked for Alfie to fuck him, and apparently a part of the process is Alfie touching him like he’s a goddamn virgin or something. He feels a little light in the head. He should’ve taken laudanum, but Alfie hates it when he does that. And everything’s focused anyway, everything in his mind is soft and sharp at the same time. He can’t think clearly but Alfie’s grip on his knees is firm and real.  
  
He doesn’t know how Alfie gets the oil, but when he glances at Alfie again, the man is opening the jar. He blinks and Alfie catches him staring. “I told you I’m going to try to be gentle about it.”  
  
“Yeah,” he says and takes in a ragged breath. And Alfie’s not even _done_ anything yet. Alfie’s not fucking touched him, except for his damn knees, and that doesn’t _count._ There’s no reason for him to be fucking trying to swallow down his heartbeat. “So, you are…”  
  
“I’m going to get some oil on my fingers,” Alfie says like he’s talking about the weather, thank god, “and then I’m going to put one finger into your arse. Is that alright?”  
  
“Are you going to stare at me?”  
  
Alfie blinks. “Yeah, probably. You have something against that?”  
  
“Not really. It’s just –“  
  
“You look good, Tommy,” Alfie says, his voice softer now. “Don’t worry. You look good.”  
  
“I can’t possibly look good like this.”  
  
“Oh, you don’t have a fucking clue. You’re the prettiest man I’ve ever fucked, definitely, that’s what you are.”  
  
“Except that you haven’t fucked me yet.”  
  
Alfie grins slowly, then shifts closer on the bed, settling himself sitting on the mattress in between Tommy’s sprawled legs. It’s goddamn ridiculous, _he’s_ goddamn ridiculous, laying on his back like this, and for Alfie Solomons from all people. It’s ridiculous, and then Alfie pushes one oiled fingertip in between his cheeks.  
  
“For fucking –“  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, putting his palm on Tommy’s stomach and letting it there. It’s like a goddamn weight. It keeps him grounded. And it almost keeps him from thinking that with his other hand, Alfie’s pressing a finger against his -  
  
“Alfie –“  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says in an easy voice. There’s definitely one fingertip going in now. It feels crazy. It doesn’t hurt but it’s just… it’s just… Apparently he’s letting Alfie Solomons push a finger into his ass and that’s a lot to grasp. “Yeah, feel free to say my name,” Alfie’s saying now, “if you like, because yeah, I’m not exactly against that. I’m not against that at all. I kind of like it. You’re always talking like you think you’re bigger than you are, Tommy, did you know that? You talk like a big man and you aren’t, you really aren’t, look at you, shivering like that. You’re fucking beautiful. And how’re you feeling? Tommy?”  
  
It takes him a few seconds to realise Alfie actually asked him a question. He takes a deep breath and concentrates. “Like there’s a finger in my arse.”  
  
Alfie snorts. “I’m glad you noticed.”  
  
“Shut up,” Tommy says, probably just to say something. “Shut the fuck up. Is this supposed to be happening so fucking _slowly?_ ”  
  
“Yes, actually, if you must know, yeah, it is. Don’t squirm.”  
  
“I’m not _squirming._ ”  
  
“Yeah, you are. You’re squirming because it feels odd and not very good at this point and you’re thinking why the fuck you’re letting me stick my finger in your butt. Can you take another one?”  
  
He almost laughs. “And how would I know?”  
  
“Oh, yeah, right,” Alfie says, stroking Tommy’s stomach as if he’s a kitten or something. Also, Alfie shifts closer in between his legs, pulls his finger out and, before Tommy has time to think about it, pushes two back in. “Alright?”  
  
 _Fuck._ “I don’t know.”  
  
“Want me to stop?”  
  
“No. Don’t fucking –“  
  
“Okay,” Alfie says, “okay, I won’t stop. Just breathe. It’s just a few fingers in your arse, Tommy. You’ve had worse.”  
  
“I don’t know why I’m letting you do this.”  
  
“Yeah, me neither. Could you fucking breathe in, mate? Just for me?”  
  
Tommy takes in a sharp breath.  
  
“Good,” Alfie says, stroking his stomach. “Good, yeah, that’s good. I don’t know if this helps, but I’ve always thought I’d lose if we tried to, I don’t know, fight. No guns allowed.”  
  
He laughs. “No, you wouldn’t.”  
  
“Yeah, I would,” Alfie says. He’s doing something funny with his fingers but Tommy can’t concentrate on that now. He needs to tell Alfie the man’s being fucking delusional.  
  
“You wouldn’t _lose._ You’re taller and bigger than me. You could sit on me and I couldn’t do anything.”  
  
“No, no, that’s not true, because I wouldn’t get to sit on you at the first place, because you’re so fucking fast, Tommy, you’d slip away from me.”  
  
“Do I look like I’m fucking slipping away from you?”  
  
“Well, I hope not,” Alfie says, and then he crooks his fingers, or at least that’s what Tommy thinks he’s doing with them. It’s hard to tell, exactly, because there’s a sharp feeling that shoots through him like a fucking sparkle. “Here we go,” Alfie says with a self-satisfied smirk, but underneath, he seems serious. “Found it.”  
  
“What?” Tommy asks, and then needs to close his eyes, because Alfie’s fingers brush against that spot _again_ and he’s not even sure if it feels good or not, and also, he kind of doesn’t want Alfie to see him like this. It’s too bad there’s nothing he can do about it, because he’s not going to fucking move, is he, with Alfie’s fingers stuck in his fucking arse. “ _What?_ ”  
  
“I think you’re going to like this, in the end,” Alfie says. “Anyway, it’s good to see that you’re a mere mortal, after all. I’ve been a bit worried, since you seem to go on without sleep or food or anything besides opium and, I don’t know, cigarettes. But the way you’re panting now, it really proves that you’re just one of us, Tommy, just an ordinary man, who of course likes having a few fingers in his arse, but don’t we all? Don’t we all, indeed?”  
  
“Can’t you just shut up?”  
  
“I don’t think so,” Alfie says and keeps talking. It takes Tommy a while to realise Alfie’s talking about a fucking _book_ now, that’s why it doesn’t make sense, and while he’s trying to figure out if the character in the book is a human or maybe a rabbit, Alfie puts the third finger into him. It fucking hurts. It’s not like he didn’t expect that, but he kind of didn’t expect the hurt to feel… real. It’s good. He clings into the feeling and everything else fades, including Alfie’s fucking words. And then, when he thinks he’s safe, Alfie’s fingertips find that spot again.  
  
“What the _hell?”_  
  
“What do you mean, _what the hell?”_ Alfie asks, pressing Tommy down against the mattress by his hip, possibly because he’s trying to wriggle away. “I’m trying to make this good.”  
  
“I didn’t… I can’t…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I didn’t think it’d be _good._ ”  
  
Alfie crooks his fingers _again_ and it makes everything in Tommy tremble in a fucking wave _again._ “You didn’t think it’d be good? Why the fuck did you want to do it, then?”  
  
“I don’t know. I thought you –“  
  
“You fucking shot me in the face, Tommy,” Alfie says, “and now you decided to let me fuck you because you thought I’d _like it?_ ”  
  
Tommy bites his lower lip. He thinks he can fucking taste blood but maybe it’s in his head. “Yeah.”  
  
“You’re mad.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re mad, but you’re also very lucky because I happen to like you anyway. Just the way you are. You think you can take my cock now?”  
  
“I don’t fucking know,” he tells Alfie. He’s possibly panting. “Aren’t you supposed to know that?”  
  
“Well, Tommy, mate, you really trust me too much,” Alfie says, but his voice is gentle like it sometimes gets when they’re in bed. Especially in the morning, when Tommy’s been awake for hours and is fucking tired of watching the ceiling and then Alfie slowly drifts awake and starts talking nonsense about what Tommy’s hair looks like when it’s been mashed against the pillow all night. “I think you’re ready.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“Fine,” Alfie says and pulls his fingers out, then stares at Tommy for a few seconds. “Now, maybe you’d like to turn around.”  
  
It takes Tommy a few seconds to realise what he said.  
  
“Only because it’ll be easier,” Alfie says, and now _he’s_ the one sounding nervous. “Not that I wouldn’t want to see your face, because I _would_ , it’s just that it’s going to be a tight fit, and I don’t want to fucking hurt you, Tommy, I really don’t.”  
  
“ _Fine._ ”  
  
“Bloody hell,” Alfie says, his eyes wide. At least Tommy doesn’t need to look him in the eyes now. He crawls onto his knees, his elbows pushed against the mattress, his head resting in between his shoulder. Then Alfie lays his palm in between Tommy’s shoulder blades and pushes him down. “Sorry, mate, it’s just that it’ll be easier like this.”  
  
“Don’t fucking call me _mate_ when you’re about to fuck me.”  
  
Alfie’s quiet for half a second. “Alright, darling.” And then, before Tommy can protest, Alfie takes a firm grip of his hips and pushes the tip of his cock into him. “Alright?”  
  
He tries to keep still and not fucking kick Alfie in the leg or anything, because what would be the point of that? He _asked_ Alfie to ask him to do this. “Stop fucking _talking._ ”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says slowly, “no, that’s not going to happen. We’re going to stay like this until you tell me you’re alright, darling.” And then he’s stroking Tommy’s back with the flat of his palm, back and forth, up and down, like that’s supposed to make it easier to forget that he’s also trying to fit his cock in Tommy’s arse.  
  
Tommy takes a deep breath and then another. He should tell Alfie that he’s alright, but there’s no fucking rush, is there? Alfie’s already stroking him as if he’s frightened or something. He _isn’t._ It’s just that he’s on all four in Alfie Solomon’s bed and he’s waiting to have Alfie’s cock in him and it’s all a little bit disorienting. He didn’t think he wanted this. He didn’t think he was one of those men. And he’s not sure he is, not exactly, it’s just that it’s very nice, the way Alfie’s touching his back, and he can’t fucking think about anything else than Alfie, and he’s not even on opium right now.  
  
“Alright,” he says. “I’m alright.”  
  
“Sure?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Good,” Alfie says, his hand stopping on the low of Tommy’s back.  
  
He pushes another inch in.  
  
“Fucking hell,” Tommy says without meaning to, but then it’s too late anyway. “Bloody fucking _hell_ , Alfie, this is _mad_ , this is… do you people actually _like_ this?”  
  
Alfie pushes in another inch.  
  
“Shit. Shit –“  
  
“Quiet, now,” Alfie says, his fingers reaching to stroke Tommy’s hair now. “It’s alright, darling, it’s alright. I have you. Remember what I did with my fingers? I’m going to figure out how to do that with my cock.”  
  
“Stop talking. Stop –“  
  
“Take a deep breath, darling.”  
  
“Stop fucking calling me –“  
  
 _Darling_ , he thinks. Fuck. _Fuck._ He takes a deep breath and tries to think that it’s okay, it’s just Alfie’s cock stuck in there.  
  
“We’re settled now,” Alfie says in a light voice that’s an act, Tommy fucking knows that but appreciates the gesture anyway. Alfie strokes his back soothingly. “I’m just going to give you a minute.”  
  
“A minute –“  
  
“Or less. Or more.”  
  
“Alfie –“  
  
“I think,” Alfie says, “I _think_ that afterwards, we’re going to drink tea. We’re going to drink goddamn tea and sit in our chairs, watching the sea through the balcony doors. It’s going to be nice. Well, you’re going to be a little sore, probably, but it’s going to be nice. I’m going to enjoy watching you flinch when you shift your weight. Yeah, that’ll be nice. Unless you want to stay in the bed and cuddle, because trust me, I can cuddle. I can fucking cuddle, Tommy, but I bet you know that by now. Are you alright?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
He takes a deep breath and focuses on Alfie’s hand on his back. He still has Alfie’s cock in his arse but the sensation is different somehow. Maybe it’s because his own cock has stiffened a little for whatever fucking reason. He must really like Alfie’s voice or something.  
  
He clears his throat. “Yeah, I think.”  
  
“Okay,” Alfie says, “okay, that’s good. Hold on.”  
  
 _Hold on to what_ , Tommy thinks vaguely, and then he stops thinking. Alfie pulls away and pushes back in and it’s a little bit too much, and he almost says that, almost tells Alfie to fucking _stop_ because there’s just no way this is going to be good, but then Alfie does it again, and again, and the bed is creaking, and Tommy’s heart is speeding up, and when he manages to get a hand on his cock, it’s hard. He doesn’t know why the fuck, because all that’s happening is that Alfie’s slamming his cock into him again and again, and it’s goddamn uncomfortable, that’s what it is, it’s fucking -  
  
It sends a sparkle through him and he almost falls onto his face.  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, “yeah, darling, can you try to breathe or something?”  
  
“Alfie –“  
  
“Yeah, I know. Now, I want you to take your cock in your hand and try to jerk yourself off.”  
  
Tommy tries, only his hand keeps slipping, because Alfie’s cock hits that spot inside of him _again._  
  
“Take your cock in your hand, Tommy.”  
  
“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” he says, but he sounds like he’s being fucked and he can’t think about anything else. Maybe that’s why Alfie laughs at him.  
  
“Yeah, no, I think I’m going to,” Alfie says, pushing in harder and in a slightly different angle, which makes it fucking _impossible_ for Tommy to actually jerk himself off efficiently, because he can’t fucking breathe or think or keep his knees from wobbling. “I think I’m going to tell you exactly what to do with your cock, because I know better, Tommy, I know better what you like, I’m going to tell you and you’re going to do what I say, and I’m going to tell you when I want you to squeeze it, because I _know_ , and I told you that you were going to like this, but did you listen to me? No. No, you didn’t. You never listen to me, not really, you come to me when you’re tired of your life in your fancy country house and in your fancy office with your fancy politician friends, you come here and let me suck you off and let me think that you actually like me, and then you leave, and let me tell you, Tommy, it’s getting a little difficult to watch you leave. It’s getting a little –“  
  
That’s when Tommy comes. Maybe he moans, because Alfie falls silent right away and slowly pulls off him, falls onto the mattress next to him, reaches for his hair. There’s cum in his hand and in the sheets and he’s a fucking mess, he knows that, he’s panting and his skin is damp with sweat and his arse kind of hurts a little and he can’t believe he let Alfie Solomons fuck him. And beside him, Alfie takes his own cock in his hand, tugs a couple of times in haste and then comes with a sigh that sounds almost sad.  
  
It's almost as if the clocks in the room have slowed down.  
  
“What did you say?” Tommy asks, when he can breathe again.  
  
Alfie’s silent for a long while, then rolls onto Tommy, puts his arm around Tommy’s chest like he’s a fucking pillow or something, and kisses his throat clumsily. “Nothing. How was it?”  
  
“Very uncomfortable.”  
  
Alfie snorts. “Yeah, I noticed.”  
  
“You don’t really do that?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Doesn’t it…” Tommy bites his lip. It’s fucking difficult to breathe when Alfie’s kind of laying on him. He pushes his fingers into Alfie’s hair and tightens his grip, just a little.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Doesn’t it feel good for you?”  
  
“Yeah, it does,” Alfie says, his voice muffled against Tommy’s throat. “It does. But, I don’t know. It makes me feel vulnerable or something. I have issues, you know.”  
  
“Issues.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I hadn’t noticed.”  
  
Alfie kisses him on the throat and then bites the same spot. “You hadn’t noticed? Well, good.”  
  
Tommy wraps his arms around Alfie’s shoulders. There’s no way he can sleep like this. He could never, ever, sleep with Alfie Solomons on him.  
  
“I’m willing to let you try, if you want to, “Alfie says in a quiet voice. He sounds half-asleep. “Just to keep us even.”  
  
“I think there’s no need.”  
  
Alfie takes a deep breath, then looks up from Tommy’s throat. He’s flushed and his bad eye is looking particularly dead. It should probably put Tommy off, to think that this is the man whom he let to fuck him. But it doesn’t. “Tommy?”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“I wanted to make it good. I didn’t want to hurt you.”  
  
“You didn’t,” he says, stroking Alfie’s back. He feels lazy from head to toe. It’s a foreign feeling, not completely pleasant but intriguing. “You didn’t hurt me. Not much, anyway. I don’t know if you noticed, but you shoved your cock in me.”  
  
“I noticed.”  
  
“It was good, Alfie,” he says. “But don’t think we’re going to sleep like this.”  
  
“Of course not,” Alfie says and falls asleep on Tommy five minutes later.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe it isn't about the tea and conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, this is the last chapter! Thank you so much for reading and for the comments, this tiny thing I started writing to soothe my feelings after season 5 somehow became 25k words I suppose partly because Tommy's such a mess and I couldn't fit him in a short story but partly because of all your support and lovely comments!
> 
> Now, I've been writing a one-shot kind of a sequel to this story (with Alfie's PoV, because the poor dude has put up with A LOT from Tommy so far). So, I made this a series, and stay tuned for the sequel!
> 
> And I know Tommy shooting Alfie in the head comes up a lot in this story. But well. I suppose that'd be kind of a thing that'd be a little difficult to actually forget in a relationship.

“What’re you going to do?”  
  
“What?” Alfie asks. He’s sitting in his armchair, reading a book with a frown so deep it has to hurt his face.  
  
“You need glasses.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Alfie says, puts the book aside and stares at Tommy with his one good eye. “What do you mean, what am I going to do? I’m going to finish reading this book and then we’re going to have tea.”  
  
“You can’t stay here forever.”  
  
Alfie sighs. “Yeah, I can.”  
  
“No, you can’t.”  
  
“Yeah, I can. Tommy, let me tell you a secret. _Forever_ doesn’t really take, you know, forever. And my forever is going to be considerably shorter than yours because I have, you know, _cancer._ ”  
  
“You never talk about it.”  
  
“Well, why the fuck would I talk about it? Talking about it isn’t going to fix it.”  
  
Tommy opens his mouth and closes it again.  
  
“Why don’t you talk about your fucking insomnia? Talking might actually do some good there, you know.”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“You’re a goddamn fool,” Alfie says in a soft voice. “You wouldn’t fix your issues even though you had a chance, because there’re so many that you wouldn’t fucking know who you are without them.”  
  
“Alfie –“  
  
“Well, yeah, I know. We don’t talk about that either. You just come here for tea. And for a good fuck. I know how it is.”  
  
“ _Alfie –_ “  
  
“Fine.” Alfie takes in a deep breath, then coughs. He’s been coughing more recently. It’s one of the things they don’t talk about. “I know you love your issues, Tommy, I know that. And I… I just need you to stay alive, alright? So don’t fucking let them drown you.”  
  
“I won’t,” Tommy says, even though it seems like a bold promise to make. He thinks he’s been sleeping a little more lately, though. Just a little. Three hours instead of two, something like that. His ghosts are always a little quieter when he’s with Alfie. He probably shouldn’t be surprised. It makes sense that Grace wouldn’t like staying around when Alfie’s there. It’s difficult to imagine having them both in the same room. Or in the same life.  
  
He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes for a second. He doesn’t need to worry about that, now, does he? He already lost Grace. There’s no fucking competition, not outside of his head, and nothing in his head is exactly real.  
  
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Alfie says, his voice quiet now. “Sometimes I wish you’re getting better. Sometimes I wish that coming back to me, you know, having me around in case you want to talk about your issues to someone who’s even worse of an asshole than you are, sometimes I wish it helps.”  
  
“It does.”  
  
“It doesn’t change anything, though.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“And call me an idiot, Tommy, but sometimes I wish it would. I fucking wish I could fix you. Because, you know, you have everything. You’ve been burning the world down to get the things you have now, and now you have everything.”  
  
He almost laughs.  
  
“Yeah, well, you know you have, you have money and power.”  
  
“No. Michael is –“  
  
“Don’t fucking talk to me about Michael,” Alfie says softly, “I mean, yeah, you’re very welcome to talk to me about how you think your fucking cousin is going to screw you behind your back, but I mean, don’t think I’ll believe you. Because what I believe, mate, is that you’re making it up because you can’t live in peace.”  
  
Tommy wants to tell him that isn’t true, but it’s obviously true, so he doesn’t.  
  
“You could buy a horse. You could buy ten goddamn horses and spend all your time with them. You could play with your kids and make love with your wife and be a goddamn happy man.”  
  
“Make love –“  
  
“Yeah. That’s what some people call it. For a reason, I might add.”  
  
He swallows. “Alfie –“  
  
“And to answer your question,” Alfie says, “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. I don’t fucking know. Probably I’ll stay here as long as I feel like it. And if there comes a day when I feel like going back to London and, I don’t know, getting myself in the middle of all the craziness again, then I’ll do it. But I doubt that.”  
  
Tommy nods.  
  
“Would you come to see me if I was in London?” Alfie asks, and suddenly it sounds like a real question.  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“Not like this, probably.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Tommy says. “Someone would find out eventually.”  
  
Alfie looks at him for a while, chewing on his lower lip. “And it’s not like we aren’t a little bit dangerous, you and me. It’s not like we could have anyone killed for fucking calling us names if we wanted to.”  
  
“It’d be bad for business, though.”  
  
“Really? And what the fuck do you know about that?”  
  
“It’s not like you’ve been telling people you are –“  
  
“Oh, they know,” Alfie says, crossing his hands in his lap. “They know what I am. If they don’t, they suspect.”  
  
“I didn’t know.”  
  
“You’re a fucking idiot, Tommy.”  
  
“So, you’re telling me that we could do this in London. You’re telling me that I could come to your house and we’d fuck and have breakfast together and not care about who knows.”  
  
“Well,” Alfie says, “no. I guess no. I guess you wouldn’t come to my house in London. Because I think the reason why you have the guts to come here is that this is the end of the world. This is fucking Margate. Nothing is exactly real in here. You can come here and try to forget who you are supposed to be, and afterwards you can fuck off and put all that back on. Your fucking armour.”  
  
“My armour.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“No, no,” Alfie says, sounding tired. “I’m staying here so that I don’t have to put _my_ fucking armour on ever again. We aren’t that different, Tommy, you and me.”  
  
“It’s not that I don’t think this is real.”  
  
Alfie sighs. “Really? Because I fucking disagree, mate.”  
  
“It’s not that I wouldn’t want to come to your house in London. Because I would. I would want to. I’d want to fucking come there and… do all the stuff we do here.”  
  
“You’d come to London, to me, for a nice fuck.”  
  
“And for breakfast.”  
  
“I don’t believe it.”  
  
“Yeah.” Tommy takes a deep breath. Fuck, he feels tired. He’s stayed one night already and he should get back to Birmingham. He just can’t make himself leave. “I’d want to, but I probably wouldn’t. I don’t think it’d work. With men like us.”  
  
“Yeah. Men who can have anyone killed.”  
  
“I didn’t mean that. I meant, _men like us._ ”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Because I know I used to say that it’s just you, Alfie. But it isn’t.”  
  
“Yeah, I know.”  
  
“And it’s not just about the fucking.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Because I like that too, as you know, but it isn’t… I’m not driving all the way here just to have your cock in my arse.”  
  
Alfie snorts. Tommy can’t stop himself from smiling, so he doesn’t. “Oh, you aren’t? Because I thought so. I was under the impression that what you keep coming back for is my cock.”  
  
“You think too much of your cock,” he says easily. “It’s just a cock, really.”  
  
“Depends on where you put it.”  
  
“You aren’t going to get to put anywhere anytime soon if you keep this conversation going.”  
  
“Oh, but I disagree, because you fucking love this, Tommy. You absolutely love this conversation.”  
  
“No, I don’t,” he says and then takes a deep breath. “Can you imagine a world in which we could, I don’t know, in which we could…”  
  
“What?” Alfie asks, his voice suddenly quiet. “What we could, exactly?”  
  
“Buy a house. I don’t know. Walk on a street.”  
  
“Have kids. Well, that’d be tricky.”  
  
“Don’t fucking –“  
  
“No, no, I know. Sorry.” Alfie tilts his head to the side, watching him carefully. “And by the way, I love that you’re asking me this.”  
  
He waits.  
  
“No,” Alfie says finally, “no, I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine a world in which we could buy a house together and fucking _live_ in there and have dinner parties and own a dog and walk it together hand in hand with no one fucking looking at us twice.”  
  
Tommy nods.  
  
“But then again, I never had much of an imagination,” Alfie says. “Not for anything good, because bad things I can imagine just splendidly. So, I don’t know. Give it a hundred years and we’ll see.”  
  
“We’ll see.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“In a hundred years.”  
  
“I’ll be dead by then,” Alfie says, smiling just a little, “but I bet you won’t be. You’ll live on booze and laudanum for, I don’t know, two hundred years at least.”  
  
“Sounds lonely.”  
  
“No, you’ll have company. Everyone will love you, Tommy. Just give them a chance.”  
  
“Shut up already. I came here to drink tea.”  
  
“Everyone will fucking love you,” Alfie says, shaking his head. “And maybe after a hundred years, you’re going to tell people about your old friend Alfie Solomons and they’ll think it’s a fucking love story.”  
  
Tommy bites his lip.  
  
“Yeah, that’s right,” Alfie says and stands up. “Now, weren’t we going to drink tea?”  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
It keeps ringing in his head. _It’s a fucking love story._ It’s been weeks since Alfie said that to him, and he _knows_ Alfie didn’t mean anything by it. And still, he keeps tasting the words in his mouth. They are in bed, it’s early in the morning, his toes are poking out from under the blanket and the air is too cold but he can’t do anything about it, because Alfie’s got a hand on his cock.  
  
He knows this isn’t only about fucking. That’s been pretty obvious from the beginning. If he just wanted someone to fuck, he wouldn’t spend half a day driving to Margate to drink tea with Alfie Solomons. He could find someone in London or in Birmingham. Hell, he could be in his own nice bed with Lizzie, who always knows what he wants and also knows what he needs and listens to and ignores him just the right amount. He could be fucking Lizzie right now. There’s no reason for him to be in Alfie’s bed.  
  
It's not about fucking _love._  
  
Maybe it’s because Alfie’s a man. Maybe that’s what he wants, a man to fuck him, and Alfie’s just a convenient solution. And then he almost fucking laughs aloud, because surely Alfie’s not been _a convenient solution_ for anyone, ever.  
  
“What?” Alfie’s asking, his breath warm and wet against Tommy’s ear, and why the fuck Alfie’s crawling on him like this, anyway? Why’s he pressed against Tommy’s body as if it offended him if there was an inch of air in between them? And why’s Tommy letting him be like this, one hand tugging his cock and the other stroking his hair almost gently? “What, Tommy?” Alfie asks against his ear, his beard rubbing against the side of Tommy’s face. It should be unpleasant. “What’re you thinking about? What’s so much more interesting than my cock?”  
  
 _Shit._ Apparently his own hand on Alfie’s cock has stopped at some point. “Sorry.”  
  
Alfie snorts. His hand stops but the grip of his fingers tightens. Tommy has to bite his lip to fucking swallow down a moan. “My cock’s just fine, Tommy, don’t worry about it. I’m worried about _you._ You aren’t normally thinking that much when I’m trying to jerk you off.”  
  
“I’m not thinking.”  
  
“The fuck you aren’t.”  
  
He takes a deep breath. “I just…” But there’s no way he can finish it.  
  
Alfie stares at him for a few seconds, then lets go of his cock and pushes himself up on his elbows. “You what?”  
  
“Nothing. Alfie –“  
  
Alfie wraps his fingers around Tommy’s wrist and then squeezes until Tommy pulls his hand away from Alfie’s cock. He wasn’t doing much with it, anyway. “You want something else? You want me to blow you or something?”  
  
He licks his lips. “No.”  
  
Alfie narrows his eyes at him. “Fuck you, then? Because it’s early in the morning, Tommy. I just woke up. You know I can’t do a good job about it when I’ve just woken up and all my joints ache.”  
  
“No,” he says, realising vaguely that he’s placed his hand on Alfie’s back. Apparently he’s stroking Alfie in between the shoulder blades. As if they’re fucking lovers. “Why did this happen?”  
  
“What?” Alfie asks, sounding genuine.  
  
“This.”  
  
“I think,” Alfie says slowly, “it happened because you kept fucking coming back to me.”  
  
“No, I mean…” Tommy clears his throat. “So, that’s why it’s me who’s in your bed. Because I kept coming to you. That’s the reason, right?”  
  
“I feel like this is a fucking trap, Tommy.”  
  
“You picked me because I was already here.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says very slowly, watching him. He takes a deep breath as Alfie lowers himself down, pressing him against the mattress again. He could throw Alfie off if he wanted to. Probably. But they fit together nicely like this. His cock is almost soft now and it’s trapped against Alfie’s thigh, and Alfie’s knee is in between his legs. “No,” Alfie says, stroking Tommy’s hair back and forth. “No, that’s fucking bullshit, and you know it.”  
  
“No, I don’t.”  
  
“You don’t want me to say things like that to you, Tommy.”  
  
He bites his lip.  
  
“You don’t,” Alfie says and leans down to kiss him on the cheek, only he pokes Tommy at the eye with his nose while doing it. “You don’t want me to say that if I could pick anyone, if I had all the queer men of London at my reach, I’d still want to have you in my bed.”  
  
Tommy closes his eyes. _Fuck._  
  
“You,” Alfie says, “you of all people. You don’t want me to tell you that I’ve fucking thought about this for a long time. You don’t want to hear that if you were a woman, I’d have taken you on a fucking date, I’d have bought you flowers and jewellery and I’d have fucking _courted_ you, yeah, that’s what I would’ve done. Instead, I stabbed you in the back again and again until finally you shot me in the face.”  
  
“Let’s not talk about that,” Tommy says, stroking the back of Alfie’s neck.  
  
“Yeah. Let’s not. And let’s not, I guess, let’s not talk about how I always thought you were _brilliant_ , you little piece of shit, you were _brilliant_ and I would’ve kissed you and fucked you and done everything you wanted, if you had wanted anything.”  
  
“You never asked.”  
  
“No,” Alfie says, pushing the tip of his finger against Tommy’s half-open mouth. Tommy lets it slip inside. “No, I didn’t ask. You’d have shot me in the face.”  
  
“ _Alfie._ ”  
  
“Yeah, maybe I’m still a bit bitter about that,” Alfie says in a voice that doesn’t sound bitter at all. Then he pulls his finger back and kisses Tommy on the mouth. It’s a clumsy and hasty kiss and Tommy clings into it. “You don’t want,” Alfie says against his mouth, “you don’t want to hear what I think of you.”  
  
“I bet you don’t think about me at all.”  
  
“You don’t want to hear,” Alfie says, “because that’s going to sound a lot like I’d be in love with you. Tommy. _Tommy,_ you’re getting hard again. Is this working for you?”  
  
Tommy licks his lips. “Don’t you fucking lie to me.”  
  
“I’m not lying.”  
  
“You can’t say things like that,” he says, reaching for Alfie’s cock. Alfie’s kind enough to lean away from him to make him just enough space to get his hand in between their bodies. “You can’t fucking tell me you’re in love with me.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Alfie says, just kissing him.  
  
“Because what the hell I’m supposed to do with that? Say it back?”  
  
“That’s why I didn’t.”  
  
“I can’t. I don’t know if it’s true.”  
  
“I _know._ ”  
  
“Get on your knees, Alfie,” he says.  
  
Alfie does, hovering over him. He shouldn’t like this. He takes his own cock in his left hand and keeps his right tugging Alfie’s, and then he speeds up. Alfie’s watching him as if he’s a miracle. If there was nothing else, if there was no life to get back to, maybe then he could believe it all. Maybe he could stay here, in Alfie’s bed, and think that they’re in love. He’d go crazy in a week. But until that, it’d be alright.  
  
“Tommy, you’re thinking about something again,” Alfie says, leaking on Tommy’s fingers already. He reaches down and covers Tommy’s hand with his own, squeezing Tommy’s fingers that’re trying to tug his cock.  
  
Tommy lets out a sigh and allows Alfie to choose the pace.  
  
Later, they take turns bathing. The water is a little too hot and Alfie complains about it loudly until it’s too cold, and Tommy smokes a cigarette in the doorway, wrapped in a towel, watching him. What a ridiculous man. There’s no way Tommy could fall in love with a man like that.  
  
He stays for another day. In the evening, Polly calls him, and he doesn’t ask how she knows where he is. He really doesn’t want to know. Then he gets to bed with Alfie and almost loses his mind before Alfie _finally_ cares to put his cock into him and fuck him against the mattress. He’s not sure if he prefers this to the gentler things, the blow jobs and jerking each other off. But when Alfie’s buried deep inside him, grabbing his hips almost too tightly, muttering nonsense, holding him in place when he tries to keep from coming for one more second, it makes everything in him go quiet. Expect for his heart.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“I don’t like it.”  
  
He lights a cigarette and then glances at Alfie, who’s avoiding his gaze. “I know. I don’t like it, either.”  
  
“Because it’s not like you believe a fucking word of that shit,” Alfie says. It sounds like he’s trying to hide that there’s a question underneath.  
  
“Of course I don’t.”  
  
“This man, this fucking _Mosley_ ,” Alfie says slowly, “you don’t agree with him or anything.”  
  
“No,” he says, staring at Alfie. At least the idiot is looking at him now. “I don’t fucking agree with him about anything. That’s why I’m doing this.”  
  
“I don’t like it.”  
  
“I fucking _know_ that, Alfie.”  
  
“And I know what you’re thinking,” Alfie says. “You’re thinking that I don’t get to say that. I don’t have a fucking say about your doings. We aren’t… I’m not your fucking _wife,_ I’m not kin, so I don’t get a say. I’m just an old friend you come to see sometimes, for sex and conversation. I’m just a –“  
  
“Shut up, Alfie.”  
  
“But I don’t want you mixed up with this, Tommy. I don’t fucking want you to do this.”  
  
“I’m already mixed up with this.”  
  
“You’re mixed up with fucking _everything_ ,” Alfie says, takes a deep breath and then coughs a little. Tommy puts out the cigarette. It’s still early in the morning but he’s got to get back to London soon. He’s going to see Mosley this evening. When he thinks about it, it’s like something’s crawling under his skin, something he’d try to cut out if only he thought it was a real thing. “And what’s your plan, exactly?” Alfie asks in a small voice that’s making Tommy feel as bad as thinking about the dinner with Mosley.  
  
“I’ve told you my plan.” He shouldn’t have. But Alfie asked.  
  
“Yeah, you have. You’ve told me your fucking plan. You’re going to kill him and then you’re going to become him.”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“And I’m going to hear his bullshit coming from your mouth.”  
  
He takes a deep breath. “No, that’s… I don’t want you to listen to me when I’m…”  
  
“When you’re giving speeches and pretending to believe in the same things than Oswald Mosley.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m going to fucking listen, Tommy. I can’t not to.”  
  
“I’m going to change it,” he says. “You know that. I’m going to take over the whole fucking thing and change it. I have to.”  
  
Alfie shakes his head slowly. “No. Tommy, sometimes I think that maybe you’re just an idiot. Honestly. Maybe there’s something missing inside your head, like, half of your brain, because this is madness. It’s a fucking nice thing you think you’re trying to do, I’ll give you that, but it’s madness, it’s a fucking –“  
  
“I need to try.”  
  
“Dead-end, it’s a fucking dead-end, that’s what it is. Those things you’re trying to fucking fight, Tommy, they’re in too deep. People who believe that will fucking cling into it even if it’s the last thing in their bloody hands. You can try as much as you like to change their mind and they’ll look at your pretty face and listen to your pretty voice and they will only hear what they want to. They will only hear what they believed to start with.”  
  
“No. People change.”  
  
“No, they don’t,” Alfie says, sounding tired.  
  
“I have.”  
  
“No. You’ve just got new layers on.” Alfie tilts his head to the side. “And got rid of some.”  
  
“I’m going to try anyway.”  
  
“I _know_ ,” Alfie says with a deep sigh. “You’re a mad fucking bastard, I hope you know that. And I fucking hope you aren’t doing this for me.”  
  
Tommy lights another cigarette.  
  
“Fucking hell, Tommy. _Fucking hell._ ”  
  
“I didn’t say anything.”  
  
“Well, you never do,” Alfie says and stands up, walks at Tommy’s armchair, takes the cigarette from his hand and puts it out. Then he rests his palms on Tommy’s neck, holding his head in his hands. He could easily wring Tommy’s neck if he wanted to. It wouldn’t take a fucking second. Tommy closes his eyes. “When do you need to leave?” Alfie asks, his thumbs brushing against Tommy’s chin.  
  
“Maybe in half an hour.”  
  
“Can I hold you?”  
  
He swallows. “Yeah. In bed?”  
  
“Well, I’m not going to have you sitting in my lap, am I?” Alfie says, pushing his fingers through Tommy’s hair. “You’re surprisingly heavy for a skinny bastard. And you know my knee.”  
  
“Yeah, I know your knee.”  
  
“Thank you. And by that I mean, I don’t fucking want you to do it. But you’re just going to do it anyway, so thank you.”  
  
“Don’t thank me. You’re going to hate it.”  
  
“Yeah, I fucking will,” Alfie says, leans down and kisses him on the mouth. “Now come to bed. For fifteen minutes. And then we’ll drink tea very quickly.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“How’s it going?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The plan.”  
  
“I have a sniper,” he says, reaching over Alfie’s chest to grab a glass of water on Alfie’s side table. Alfie pats him on the ass while he’s at it. “And a date.”  
  
“You have a date with Oswald Mosley,” Alfie says, clearly trying to sound amused. “Should I be jealous?”  
  
“Well, I’m going to kill him.”  
  
“So, that’s exactly how you and me got started. And he’s definitely prettier than me.”  
  
“If I was looking for _pretty_ –“  
  
“Fuck off,” Alfie says and grabs his ass. He kicks Alfie in the thigh with his knee, and there’s a moment in which he’s almost sure they’ll wrestle. But turns out they’re too lazy for that. Alfie puts his fingers into Tommy’s hair and takes a light grip, holding his face in place, and he kisses Alfie on the throat, which happens to be at his reach. “So,” Alfie says, his voice serious now, “you’re actually going to go through with it.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And there’s nothing I can do to change your mind.”  
  
“No. You know how I am.”  
  
“Yeah, I fucking know. And are you sure you won’t get yourself killed?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re lying,” Alfie says in soft voice, wraps his arms around Tommy’s back and pulls him closer. “You’re a fucking liar, Tommy Shelby.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I can’t believe I fell for you,” Alfie says.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The next time he goes to Margate, his hands are shaking and he can’t make himself look Alfie in the eyes. Rachel asks him how he’s been and he asks her about her mother who’s been sick, and Alfie hovers in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and with a disapproving look on his face, Tommy can tell that much without looking. It’s a windy day and the windows are clattering.  
  
“So,” Alfie says when they’re upstairs and have almost finished drinking tea. “Tomorrow.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re going to fucking stand on the stage when your sniper shoots Oswald Mosley who’s standing right next to you.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re mad.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You should talk to someone.”  
  
“I’m talking to you.”  
  
“Yeah,” Alfie says, “ _yeah,_ but you see, the thing is that I’m just as a crazy. In a different way but still.”  
  
“So, that’s why we’re so good together.”  
  
“You think we’re good together? Because I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if I’m making it worse.”  
  
“You aren’t.”  
  
“Because darling,” Alfie says, crossing his legs and staring at him, “I don’t think you’ve slept a proper night in _weeks._ I think you look like a man who just dug himself out of his own grave. I think if you chose to quit opium, you’d probably shoot yourself in the head. And you weren’t like that when we started this.”  
  
“Alfie –“  
  
“And now what you’re telling me is that you’re going to get the leader of the fascist movement in England killed and take his place and fucking save us all from that bullshit. And you can’t even fucking _sleep._ ”  
  
“Alfie, for fuck’s –“  
  
“I’m just a little worried about you, you see.”  
  
“I don’t know why I’m like this,” Tommy says. “But it’s not because of you. It always gets a bit better when I’m with you.”  
  
“Does it, really?” Alfie asks, sounding like he means it.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Because I –“  
  
“I know, Alfie.”  
  
“I don’t want to break your, I don’t know, your brain.”  
  
“You aren’t. It was already broken. You’re making it a bit better.”  
  
“Good,” Alfie says. There’s no telling if he believes Tommy or not. “Good, that’s good, because there’s something I need to tell you, you fucking idiot. Just in case your skilled sniper ends up shooting you in the head instead of Mosley. Because let’s be honest, which one of your fucking plans has ever gone the way you wanted? Which one, Tommy? No, don’t answer me, because I fucking _know._ Someone always messes up, and it doesn’t fix it that you somehow pull it through in the end, it doesn’t fix it, Tommy, because I really need you not to kill yourself now. I need you to fucking get it right and not get pulled in deeper because, and I’m not going to fucking say this twice, I fucking need you to be alright because I fucking love you.”  
  
“I know,” Tommy says.  
  
Half an hour later, he drives back to London.


End file.
